Protecting the Open Spaces

Residents of San Dimas, La Verne and other cities near the Frank G. Bonelli Regional County Park object to plans for more commercial development in the sprawling 1,976-acre facility. So far county officials have agreed to scale back the development plans to a limited degree, but more changes are needed in order to preserve the park’s natural state.

The prime mover behind plans to commercialize Bonelli Park is Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who represents the area and who has long been an advocate of letting private industry provide more county services as a means of saving money. He argues that county government loses about $900,000 a year on the park. Schabarum insists that the new privately operated projects that he would like to see there--including restaurants, rental lodges, swimming pools, tennis courts, a Western-style tourist village and an aerial tramway--would reduce the deficit by $600,000.

But there is already much private development in and around Bonelli Park--mainly a water recreation area called Raging Waters on the northwest corner of the property and a recreational-vehicle park on the east shore of Puddingstone Reservoir, the park’s centerpiece. To build new facilities adjacent to either of those two developments should not make a major difference to the park’s ambiance. But it would be a mistake to construct rental chalets, with tennis courts and swimming pools, on the reservoir’s west shore, which is currently a placid area reserved for sailboats. And putting an aerial tramway anywhere in or near the park would be a disaster. As one critic has correctly pointed out, it would spoil a natural park with an attraction better suited to a man-made amusement center like Disneyland.

To his credit, Schabarum has already changed his original development plan for Bonelli Park, which envisioned the construction of condominiums on the property, and has appointed a citizens’ advisory committee to recommend other changes. If that committee looks at the park with the same affection that most of its neighbors do, it will recommend even more scaling back, and Schabarum should take heed. Bonelli Park is one of the last natural open spaces left in the San Gabriel Valley. Keeping it that way requires careful control of any further commercial development within its boundaries.