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Haylynn Conrad Newsletter — August 21, 2026
🌊 The Malibu Current with Councilmember Haylynn Conrad
📅 August 21, 2026
Hello, Malibu,
East Malibu has its grocery store back. Hank's Organic officially opened its doors this week in the old Pacific Coast Greens space, and I'll admit I was grinning in the aisles on Wednesday morning. After years of waiting, that stretch of PCH finally has its neighborhood market again.
That was just one thread in a full week. The first school bell of the year rang Thursday morning, a late-night brush fire near Yerba Buena Road gave us all a jolt on Monday, and the city is now operating under a declared local emergency as fire season peaks. There is also an op-ed with my name on it, a gallery show entering its final hours, and a survey deadline creeping closer. Here is where things stand.
🛒 Economic Development: East Malibu Has a Market Again
🔹 Hank's Organic is open at 22601 Pacific Coast Highway: I stopped by Wednesday morning to welcome the team, and the doors are finally, truly open. This space housed Pacific Coast Greens for 28 years, and since it closed, East Malibu has gone without a grocery store of its own. Founder Manuel Reynoso opened the original Hank's in the Arts District in 2021 and built its following on a simple promise of "organic at the right price," with a juice bar, deli counter, and a produce case worth the trip.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: A recovery summer full of cones and detours is a hard season to open a business in Malibu. Anyone choosing to invest here right now is making a bet on our future, and the best way to say thank you is to show up with a shopping list. Welcome to Malibu, Hank's.
👉 See my visit to Hank's (Instagram)
👉 Explore City business resources
📚 Education: The Backpacks Are Officially Back
🔹 The 2026-27 school year began Thursday, August 20: Students across Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, including all of our Malibu campuses, are back at their desks. After seventeen years of first days in this town, I can tell you the butterflies never fully go away, for the kids or for us parents.
→ 🚸 My standing ask: School zones, buses, and crosswalks are busy again, layered on top of active PCH work zones. Please build in extra time and take it slow near campuses, all year long. To our teachers, aides, custodians, and office staff: welcome back. You have this community's gratitude before the first parent-teacher conference even lands on the calendar.
👉 Explore City school resources
🌳 Environment: Growing Malibu Back, One Tree at a Time
🔹 My op-ed, Growing Malibu Back, ran in The Malibu Times this week: The short version: rebuilding after the fires means more than replacing structures. It means restoring our tree canopy, and I believe Malibu should become a designated Tree City USA community through the Arbor Day Foundation. Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills have all earned the designation. Why not us? There is no application fee, and the required investment of two dollars per capita in community forestry can be met largely by tree work the City already does. The designation also strengthens our hand when pursuing grants and partnerships, so outside dollars, not just Malibu taxpayers, help restore what burned.
→ 🌱 The vision: Native, climate-appropriate, fire-wise trees planted with a long-term plan instead of parcel by parcel, fully compatible with defensible space and Zone Zero. And an annual Arbor Day tradition where our kids plant trees they will someday sit beneath with their own children. My thanks to our City Manager and staff, who started exploring the idea as soon as I raised it.
🔹 Ten days left on the Community Lands survey: The survey on the design concepts for our five City-owned properties, more than 61 acres in all, closes Monday, August 31. One message has come through loud and clear in this process so far: people want trees, shade, and green space that still feels like Malibu. If that is your view too, or if you see it differently, say so before the window closes.
👉 Read the op-ed in The Malibu Times
👉 Take the Community Lands survey
🔥 Fire Readiness: A Declared Emergency, and a Midnight Reminder
🔹 Malibu is now under a declared local emergency for wildfire conditions: At our August 10 meeting, the Council unanimously approved the declaration after Live Fuel Moisture in the Santa Monica Mountains dropped to 63 percent, below the City's 65 percent threshold. The declaration lets the City act quickly to reduce risk, including expedited removal of encampments in our Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, completed within a day instead of after a lengthy notification process, paired with continued outreach and services for unhoused individuals.
→ 📊 What Live Fuel Moisture means: It measures how much water living vegetation is holding, and LA County Fire samples it every two weeks. Near 60 percent, living brush starts burning like dead fuel: igniting easier, spreading faster. That is why 63 percent is not a statistic. It is a siren.
🔹 Monday night's Yerba Fire showed how fast this season moves: The fire was reported around 9:50 PM near Yerba Buena and Mipolomol Roads and grew to roughly two acres, briefly triggering an evacuation warning for the Money Mountain 01 zone. Crews stopped its forward progress, the warning was lifted, and no injuries or structure damage were reported. That is exactly how the system is supposed to work, and it is also our cue to be ready for the night it works harder.
→ 🎒 Your move this week: Walk your defensible space, restock the go-bags, and talk through your family evacuation plan. The City's Fire Safety Liaisons will assess your home's wildfire readiness at no cost: call 310-456-2489 or email FireSafety@MalibuCity.org.
👉 Read the Malibu Times report on the emergency declaration
🎨 Arts: From Displacement to Renewal
🔹 The story that earned a one-word review from me: The Malibu Times profiled Dr. Daniela Schweitzer this week, the Malibu artist and clinical geneticist whose home was severely smoke-damaged in the Palisades Fire while most of her neighborhood was destroyed. Out of 19 months of displacement came 15 new paintings and a solo exhibition, What the Water Holds, now showing at Sue Greenwood Fine Art in Laguna Beach. She is also a featured artist in Carving Canvas at our own Malibu City Gallery. I shared the piece on Instagram with the only word that fit: wow. Turning that much loss into that much beauty is resilience in its purest form.
🔹 Today is the final day for Carving Canvas: The exhibition at the Malibu City Gallery at City Hall closes today, Friday, August 21, and admission is free. If you have been meaning to go, this is the meaning-to-go deadline.
🔹 And a warm recap from Point Dume: Sunday's second annual Point Dume Art Walk opened the studios of more than 30 local artists, organized by ceramicist Monica DeMoulin under the Point Dume Club Residents Association. Free, walkable, neighbor-to-neighbor art. This is the creative Malibu I love to brag about.
👉 Read the artist profile in The Malibu Times
🏛️ Get Involved: Malibu's Commissions
🔹 Want to plug into one of Malibus commissions? Planning, Parks and Recreation, Public Safety, Public Works, Arts, and the Harry Barovsky Memorial Youth Commission all meet monthly at City Hall, and every one welcomes public comment. So much of our local policy actually starts in these rooms, and if serving on one has ever crossed your mind, the application is open year-round.
👉 Browse upcoming commission meetings and agendas
👉 Apply to serve on a commission or committee
📅 Dates to Know
🔹 Today, Friday, August 21: Final day to see Carving Canvas at the Malibu City Gallery at City Hall. Free admission.
🔹 Monday, August 24, 5:30 PM: Regular City Council Meeting, Malibu City Hall (hybrid).
🔹 Monday, August 31: Last day to complete the Community Lands survey.
🔹 Saturday, September 5, 10 AM to 2 PM: Waves of Flags installation, Alumni Park, Pepperdine University. Volunteers welcome for the 25th anniversary display.
🔹 Ongoing: Westward Beach Road and the Point Dume Beach parking lot remain closed; the beach is still open on foot from the Zuma side. PCH work zones continue, with reduced speeds and doubled fines. Expect delays.
👉 Browse the full Malibu city calendar
🐝 One Last Thought
Rebuilding a town is really a long series of choices about what to grow back. This week, Malibu chose a market with full shelves in East Malibu, classrooms with kids in them, an artist's grief turned into fifteen paintings, and maybe, if we keep pushing, a future with more shade in it than we lost.
So here is my short list for you: shop the new aisles, take the survey before August 31, and keep the go-bag by the door. And since joy counts too: our fluffy girl Violet spent last Friday posing for beach portraits out at Point Dume, and her grin is the exact energy I wish you all weekend. If something in your corner of Malibu needs attention, my inbox at hconrad@malibucity.org is open, and your emails decide what I dig into next.
Soak up the weekend, Malibu.
