Plan for Country Club Splits Topanga

There will be no shortage of councils to counsel Los Angeles County officials when they sit down this month to decide whether a $100-million country club should be built in Topanga Canyon.

The 500-member Topanga Advisory Council is for the project. The rival 500-member Topanga Town Council is against it.

Both councils claim they best reflect the viewpoint of the 2,000-home Topanga community about the proposed 257-acre Montevideo Country Club development at the northern edge of the canyon.

Both are lobbying county officials in advance of a scheduled daylong Regional Planning Commission hearing April 27 on the 7-year-old development plan.

And both councils are critical of the other’s tactics.

Met With County Officials

Members of the 10-year-old Town Council have voiced their opposition to the country club plan twice in recent months during public meetings with county Supervisor Mike Antonovich and county planners at the canyon’s community hall.

Topanga Advisory Council members counterattacked Monday night with a show of support for the project at a meeting with Antonovich and the planners at a Woodland Hills hotel.

But the rift between the two groups widened when Advisory Council leaders refused to allow Town Council members into the Marriott Hotel ballroom for the meeting.

Town Council members immediately blasted the Advisory Council as being a tool of the country club’s promoters. They complained that the rival group’s name is misleading to the public and to county officials.

Closed Meeting Protested

“Theirs is a bogus organization,” said Town Council President Jan Moore, one of those barred from the Advisory Council meeting. “They chose their name so it would confuse people. It’s wrong to have closed-door meetings--all of our Town Council meetings are open to everyone.”

“I think it’s an outrage that we can’t hear what the people who are supposed to represent us are saying about our homes,” agreed Town Council member Dorothy Riek.

But Advisory Council members responded by criticizing the Town Council as a tool of environmentalists, who, they say, have a short-sighted, drawbridge mentality toward all development.

“They’re bamboozling everybody,” said Advisory Council leader Christopher Wojciechowski, proposed developer of the Montevideo Country Club project. “Their leaders seem to act like czars.”

Wojciechowski said the Advisory Council was formed last year after supporters of his project found community meetings being dominated by vocal opponents of the development.

Discussed More Open Space

He said the Advisory Council decided on a closed-meeting policy after Town Council members disrupted his group’s organizational meeting. Wojciechowski said plans for increased open space at the country club were outlined at Monday’s meeting.

Former Advisory Council president Kevin Hutchings, a Woodland Hills real estate broker, said the group favors “reasonable, well-planned” developments along all of Topanga Canyon Boulevard between Malibu and Woodland Hills.

About 100 people reportedly attended Monday night’s meeting, organized by Joan Cooper, Advisory Council executive director. Cooper refused to allow reporters in and would not answer questions outside the ballroom.

Aides to Antonovich said Tuesday that he was uncomfortable about the closed meeting. They said none of the county officials discussed the country club project during the session.

“Mike told them these things have to be addressed at an open public forum,” said David Vannatta, Antonovich’s planning deputy and one of those who attended Monday’s meeting.

“We know there is a difference between the two councils,” added Leeta Pistone, a field deputy for Antonovich. “We know there are two separate groups.”