Agoura Residents Suggest One Way Out of Problem

About 75 residents of Old Agoura, many of them on horseback, offered a compromise Saturday at a rally against a proposed road extension that they fear would erode their neighborhood’s pastoral atmosphere.

Agoura Hills City Councilman Jack W. Koenig said he expects the council to approve a funding plan for the extension of Canwood Street, the road in question, at its Tuesday meeting. But he said at the rally that the city is eager to find a solution that is agreeable to the residents.

Canwood Street, which runs parallel to the Ventura Freeway, comes to a dead end where a 150-room hotel and regional post office are under construction. The city’s proposal would extend Canwood east to Chesebro Road, providing access to the freeway from the hotel and a developing commercial area around it.

Ron Troncatty, president of Old Agoura Homeowners Assn., told the group that the association has decided not to oppose the road extension if the city permits only eastbound traffic on Canwood Street from the hotel to Chesebro Road. He also repeated an earlier association suggestion that the city add a special lane--and possibly a concrete divider--connecting Chesebro Road to Palo Comado Canyon Road and preventing traffic from the proposed extension of Canwood from turning left onto Driver Avenue.

The focal point of the disagreement has been the intersection of Chesebro Road and Driver Avenue. The extension’s path to the freeway would be through that intersection, which has no stoplight. Residents contend it would link the rural neighborhood to the commercial area.

“Driver would have to be widened; there would be no horse trails, and the slow demise of Old Agoura will happen,” Troncatty said.

“It ruins the ambiance of Old Agoura,” resident Tom O’Neil said from atop his horse, Heart. “The reason that most of us are transplanted from the Valley and Los Angeles is the rural surroundings.”

The city contends that the extension is necessary to prevent traffic from clogging the streets west of the Canwood commercial district. The district now is accessible from the freeway from the west by well-traveled Kanan Road.

“We have no choice,” Koenig said. “We have a responsibility to drain that traffic off.”

After hearing the proposals of Troncatty and the homeowners association, Koenig predicted that the council will vote to establish a special tax-assessment district to pay for the project. But he indicated that there is room for compromise on the issue.

“It can be changed; it can be modified,” he said.

After the rally, Koenig admitted that he was dubious about making Canwood one way going east. He said that would cheat the assessment district’s 14 property owners, who would be denied the full benefits of the extension while paying much of its cost.

The city has been considering the extra lane on Chesebro Road, Koenig said. If the city were to pave that lane, preventing a left turn onto Driver Avenue, the signal lights that residents oppose might not be needed, he said.

The city also is considering constructing a new road across a vacant lot at the northwest corner of the Chesebro Road-Driver Avenue intersection, which could then be bypassed by those on foot or horseback, he said. Such a move would separate commercial-vehicle traffic from the neighborhood traffic altogether, he said.