Richard Weintraub plans to build Malibu Canyon resort — again

Richard Weintraub, CEO of Weintraub Real Estate Group, plans to build a massive hotel in Malibu, according to the plans submitted to the City of Malibu in January. The developer has worked for more than a decade on various plans for the prime site overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The recent plans, reviewed by TRD, span 181,000 square feet on a lot of 545,000 square feet of total development area. The proposed hotel resort includes two restaurants, health club and spa, exterior pool, meditation room, “independent hotel suites” spanning 98,000 square feet, and a multilevel parking structure.

In 2022, Weintraub’s Green Acres LLC secured a $12.5 million loan on the property from Oakhurst Opportunity Lending Fund I and RDG Lender Services, according to property records.

The development site consists of three parcels at 4000 Malibu Canyon Road. It lies near the corner with Pacific Coast Highway across the street from Pepperdine University. Property records indicate some of the land previously belonged to the Adamson family which donated the 138 acres for the campus of Pepperdine College in 1968.

Development rumors swirled for years around this plot of land. After Weintraub tried for years to win approval for a hotel without success, he switched to a proposal for a memorial park or a high-end cemetery where the “guests check in, but they can’t check out,” as Malibu’s Mayor Skylar Peak told the Los Angeles Times in 2014. This high-tech graveyard that could be navigated with GPS was scheduled to open in 2018 but never panned out.

Weintraub did not respond to a request for comment.

While he’s best known for high-end residential projects in Malibu, Weintraub’s development careers includes “an Inland Empire mall overhaul, a historic cathedral renovation in Downtown L.A. and a Frank Lloyd Wright home,” earning him a moniker as a “renaissance man” according to broker Aaron Kirman with AKG Christie’s International Real Estate.

Weintraub rented out his La Villa Contenta estate to Beyoncé and Jay-Z and later sold it for $50 million to Behdad Eghbali, a founding partner at Santa Monica-based Clearlake Capital Group, in 2018.

Weintraub’s company has already completed one luxury hotel on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains from Malibu. Cambria Hotel Calabasas, at 26400 Rondell Street near the corner of Las Virgenes Canyon Road and the southbound exit from the 101 Freeway, has 125 rooms and opened in 2022.

Also, Weintraub was not the first to try to build a hotel on the Malibu Canyon site. Another developer first proposed a plan in 1984, according to a report by Curbed LA. It was put on ice due to the city’s development moratorium in 1991.

Nearly 40 years later, Malibu may finally have its new hotel.