Even if it didn't involve one of the most ambitious coastal development projects to come along in years, the struggle over Malibu's main commercial area would be an epic event.

It pits a local Establishment whose ardor for slow growth has not cooled in 2 1/2 years of self-rule against real estate developers eager to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build on a 125-acre swatch of mostly undeveloped land surrounded by hills and ocean.

Like a huge belt buckle, the area of Malibu's civic center is the only physical break in the community's narrow, 20-mile corridor of bluffs, beaches and canyons.

A group of developers that includes the powerful Konheim and Perenchio families and Pepperdine University see it as the perfect place for what some say could be the most significant new coastal settlement this side of Carmel Village.

Their vision calls for a mix of bungalows, estate homes, apartments and condominiums for up to 1,500 people interspersed with shops and offices built around a sprawling village green.

It would be a community drawn together by trails, promenades and a meandering mile-long creek linking several restored wetlands that would also double as an outlet for an innovative treated waste-water system.

"Malibu's always been the kind of place where if you don't know it, you could drive through and end up asking directions in Oxnard," developer John Perenchio said. "We want to give the community a core, a heart."

Sound nice?

Not to critics, who appear to include most of Malibu's elected officials.

Opponents reject the argument that creating the village would generate less traffic and air pollution than if the area were more fully developed as a commercial center, as current zoning permits.

But where Perenchio and partner Lyn Konheim see a neo-traditional village designed by San Francisco planner Peter Calthorpe, whom they commissioned for the project, others see noise, gridlock and a host of other ills, real or imagined.

"They want to put an awful lot of people in one place without regard for our (rural) character," said Richard Powell, who heads an opposition group that calls itself TRUTH. "We don't think it will work."

Another opponent, architect Richard Sole, describes the proposal as a city within a city and says that although it might make the developers lots of money, it isn't what most Malibu residents want.

"People who live here see the future development of that area as a civic and cultural center," he said. "Just what form that might take is open to interpretation, but it certainly isn't 800 homes in close proximity to a retail center."

Others who say they are at least willing to hear the developers' ideas attribute the zealous opposition to narrow-mindedness and old-fashioned NIMBY-ism (as in Not In My Back Yard).

"People who might at least consider it are afraid to speak up," community activist Sara Wan said. "They're afraid the minute they do they'll be branded pro-development, which in Malibu is akin to being labeled a Communist in the '50s."

In a community where astronomical land values have fueled bitter clashes over development, the conflict over the civic center has easily become the most rancorous land-use issue since Malibu gained independence from Los Angeles County in 1991.

It began last year and exploded in February after the City Council enacted a controversial interim zoning law that promoters of the village concept say is an anathema to their plans.

By state law, new cities normally have up to 2 1/2 years to adopt a General Plan to serve as a blueprint for development. Malibu's time limit expires this month. City officials have asked for a year's extension. They say they hope to finish work on the document during the first half of 1994.

The interim law, ostensibly designed as a stop-gap measure, outlawed residential development in the civic center, prohibited new multifamily housing throughout Malibu and placed strict limits on other kinds of development.

Fearful that such elements will be included in the General Plan, the Malibu Village Civic Assn., consisting of 16 civic center property owners, sued the city in April, asking that the ordinance be overturned.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has scheduled a trial to start Nov. 12.

The lawsuit alleges numerous violations of state environmental law in the way the ordinance was drafted and contends that the City Council should not have approved it without preparing an expensive and time-consuming environmental report.

Malibu officials insist that they acted properly and accuse the plaintiffs of making a mockery of environmental law.

"They're not suing us because we've committed a crime against the planet," Deputy City Atty. Christi Hogan said. "They're suing because they want to reap huge profits on land the city conscientiously is trying to protect."

Elected officials have been similarly plain-spoken.

"They're trying to bully us into meeting their demands," Councilman Walter Keller said. "They're trying to wear us down financially."

Malibu had already set aside $500,000 of its $8-million budget for the fiscal year to fight legal challenges to its restrictive development policies.

Now, facing a challenge from millionaire developers with deep pockets and much at stake in the civic center, officials are bracing to spend much more.

Among other things, the plaintiffs are seeking depositions from each member of the City Council, top city administrative officials and key members of Malibu's General Plan Task Force.

In the past three weeks, lawyers for the city say, they have processed more than 60,000 pages of documents in response to the lawsuit.

"It's relentless," said Hogan, the city attorney. "But if they think they can wear us down, I think they grossly underestimate the people of Malibu."

Allan J. Abshez, an attorney for the association, said his clients are merely trying to protect their property rights against a city government that has ignored them.

Abshez said he continues to hold out hope that city officials may modify their stance before the case reaches trial, adding that he had told them that without residential component there is nothing to negotiate.

The association includes some of Malibu's largest developers, including Malibu Bay Co. and Wave Properties, a subsidiary of Pepperdine University.

Pepperdine owns two prime parcels totaling 16 acres that it was left holding in 1990 after deals involving former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jerry Garvin and his partners to build condominiums there went sour.

Mike O'Neil, the university's top real estate investment officer, serves as the association's secretary.

However, the main force behind the village plan is Malibu Bay Co., which as the community's largest single commercial landholder owns 74 acres in the civic center area.

It is headed by Konheim, the son of Beverly Hills real estate investor George Konheim, and Perenchio, whose father, A. Jerrold (Jerry) Perenchio controls Univision, the international Spanish-language TV network.

Malibu Bay Co. owns 21 acres on Point Dume and another 28 acres in Trancas Canyon that have been substantially down-zoned. It is also seeking to have those zoning changes nullified.

The company's focus, however, remains on the plans for the civic center.

"These are the most benign developers I've ever come across," said Calthorpe, the planner.

"These are people who want to experiment with bungalows again, to put housing on the second floor above retail shops such as you have in Europe. . . . They want to make a complete town rather than a bunch of subdivisions and a few shopping centers."

But the proposal's detractors remain adamant.

And even supporters say that given the anti-cityhood stance of some of the players involved, it was probably too much to expect Malibu officials to willingly embrace the idea.

"They can say we're NIMBYs, but we don't want to see anything that totally changes the character of the community," said Powell, the opposition leader. "We want to protect what we have."

Malibu Redevelopment Area

A group of investors wants to transform Malibu's largely undeveloped civic center area into a residential, office and commercial town center. The proposal calls for a pedestrian-friendly shopping and entertainment village with bungalows, apartments and luxury houses linked by small plazas, parks and a wetlands corridor connected to nearby Malibu Creek. The bulk of the development would occur north of Pacific Coast Highway between Cross Creek Road and Stuart Ranch Road.