Critics Outraged at Decision to Halt $3-Million Park Purchase Program

Burbank city officials celebrated last November when the Legislature authorized a $3-million grant to the city to help it purchase privately owned hillside property for parkland.

But late Tuesday, those same officials decided they didn’t want the $3 million after all.

In a decision that drew the wrath of a coalition of hillside residents, the City Council voted to cease negotiations with developer Sherman Whitmore to purchase 185 acres of his property. The city had been conducting informal talks for months with Whitmore, who wants to build luxury homes on the property, but only had given him a formal offer in writing Friday.

The area residents, who stormed out of the council meeting after the vote, said they felt that they had been betrayed by the council and by City Atty. Douglas C. Holland, who had repeatedly told them that formal negotiations were being conducted to buy the land. Some of the residents had lobbied in Sacramento, at the city’s encouragement, to get the appropriation.

“I just don’t understand how they could treat $3 million so casually,” said Annette Baecker, president of the Mountain Reserve Preservation Assn., which spearheaded the drive to buy the land. “We worked too hard to let that money just slip through our fingers. They should have been sitting down all this time.”

Council members, who said they had been advised by Holland not to discuss the controversy, said they would explain their vote today. Only Mayor Mary E. Kelsey voted to continue negotiations.

City Was to Match Grant

Under the terms of the state allocation, the city was to get $3 million in state oil tidelands revenue and was to match that with $3 million in city funds.

Holland said last week, however, that the council should cease negotiations with Whitmore and concentrate on processing the developer’s proposals to build housing on the site.

“The issue of the land’s acquisition should not be confused with the development issue,” Holland said. “It’s clear that a negotiated acquisition is not feasible at this point. There’s a vast difference in what the city is willing to pay for the property and what Mr. Whitmore is asking for it.”

Holland said he told Whitmore that the city would be willing to purchase the land for about $6 million. “That proposal was rejected flatly as being totally unacceptable,” he said.

According to Whitmore, his own appraiser placed the value of the property, when developed, at more than $38 million.

The city made an offer Friday of $575,000 for 60 acres of Whitmore’s property. Whitmore rejected that offer, and said he would sell his entire property for about $12 million--$3 million in cash plus city redevelopment property at the north end of the Towncenter shopping center site.

The $3-million grant would have been channeled from the state through the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. That money will now most likely go to acquisitions for other cities, conservancy officials said.

One proposal, which would permit Whitmore to build 33 homes on a 60-acre site, has been rejected by the city’s Planning Board because of dangers to wildlife and “aesthetic” alteration of the hillside.