Residents of Secluded La Tuna Canyon Fight for Their Life Style

Cheryl Greslie stood defiantly in the middle of La Tuna Canyon Road with her horse and 50 neighbors to demonstrate her anger at construction of a four-lane highway.

Despite the protest, the highway was built. Now, some 25 years later, Greslie and a number of neighbors in Sun Valley are bracing against new signs of encroachment on their peaceful surroundings.

Like several other San Fernando Valley communities that have been “discovered,” La Tuna Canyon, located just five miles north of downtown Burbank, is trying to contend with the heightened interest of developers and the unfamiliar faces of newcomers. Residents in this 440-household community have signed up dozens of neighbors in the local homeowners group, held scores of meetings, confronted builders and enlisted City Council representatives in an effort to retain control over La Tuna Canyon’s destiny.

Rural Ambiance Prevails

The trappings of country living are still evident in the four-mile-long canyon area. A hand-lettered sign advertises two dozen farm-fresh eggs for $1.75 and a half-dozen tomatoes for 50 cents. The transactions are supervised by a small boy. Nearby, peacocks roam freely, and, in another yard, there is a collection of barnyard animals, including pigs, goats and chickens.

The major businesses in the area are half a dozen horse stables with Western-style wooden signs offering boarding stalls for rent.

Indeed, equestrians dominate this bucolic setting ringed by the Verdugo Mountains. Horses still outnumber cars in La Tuna Canyon, and residents estimate there are 800 horses in the area.

“There’s something about the air and the ambiance here,” said Evan Archerd, the acting president of the La Tuna Canyon Community Awareness Assn., which represents homeowners in the residential portion between Sunland Avenue and Foothill Freeway.

“When you’re riding up the canyon, the vista opens up, and you see mountains on both sides of you and all the greenery. I don’t know another place this close in, that still has the flavor of what all the Valley used to be like.”

But these days, an avocado grove gives way to a large new house, often with a Volvo station wagon in the garage and a satellite dish in the yard.

Amid the barns, pickup trucks and tool sheds are increasing numbers of boats, BMWs and swimming pools.

And builders are buying up acres of La Tuna Canyon property with an eye to introducing dozens of new families to the rustic canyon. An evangelical Christian sect has also set its sights on canyon property, and plans to build a new church and complex on 83 acres of rolling land.

But most of those who move to La Tuna Canyon do so to enhance a sense of privacy and find a haven close to the city. Once there, they tend to stay, and cast a wary eye at newcomers.

“I lived in Hollywood for 10 years and I moved out here to get away from the buildings, the high-rises, to get away from the crowdedness and come into the country life,” said Nina Franco, whose husband works at a television studio in Hollywood and commutes less than half an hour to work.

“But we’ve been here two years, and they’re starting to come in and crowd again,” Franco said.

Area Is Much in Demand

As housing prices in the Valley continue to climb, areas such as La Tuna Canyon that are relatively free of congestion yet convenient to the city have become increasingly popular, said Mark Hadley, a real estate agent at Dally Realty, at La Tuna Canyon Road and Sunland Avenue.

“This area seems to be in demand,” Hadley said. “There are plenty of people looking for places in La Tuna Canyon. The ones that tend to be looking are mostly young professional types, with both husband and wife working.”

The agency’s owner, Hal Dally, said he is seeing an increasing number of “studio types” interested in homes in La Tuna Canyon, probably because of the community’s proximity to Burbank, Studio City, and Hollywood, where most of the television and movie studios are located.

Prices for homes in the area range from $150,000 to $175,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,200-square-foot house on a half-acre lot, real estate agent Gloria Yousif said. City regulations in horsekeeping areas such as La Tuna Canyon require all lots to be a minimum of 17,500 square feet, which is slightly less than a third of an acre.

Larger, four- or five-bedroom homes from 2,500 to 3,000 square feet on the same-sized lot can go for $400,000 to $450,000, Yousif said. Additional acres would add about $75,000 each to the property’s value, he said.

The land is considerably less expensive than in other areas nearby. For example, a 2-bedroom 1,200-square-foot house on a half-acre in Toluca Lake, about seven miles away, would probably sell for $500,000, Yousif said.

“La Tuna Canyon is a nice area to live in. It’s a pretty area; it’s country, and there’s not an awful lot of that left,” said Howard Hamersly, whose company, MPH Development, has bought a 46-acre parcel of land in the 9800 block of La Tuna Canyon Road and plans to begin building 26 homes by the end of the year. Dally, who handled the transaction, said the property sold for $1.3 million.

The site is known to longtime residents as Japanese Gardens because of its former vegetation and includes a hilly portion that is said to be prone to flooding.

“We’re not against development, but these developers are coming in here and totally trying to change our whole way of life,” said Mary Ann Geyer, land-use chairwoman of the La Tuna Canyon Community Awareness Assn.

Geyer maintains that MPH Development is trying to squeeze as many houses as possible onto the available land, ignoring residents’ requests to preserve access to horse trails, which slice through the site.

“Everybody in the canyon uses this piece of property as a trail head to all the existing trails,” Archerd said. “You can ride from here to the Castaways in Burbank without setting foot on a street,” he said.

Archerd, a screenwriter, is concerned that the development will resemble Rancho Caballo, a MPH housing project on Sunland Boulevard that is more luxurious than most of the ranch-style, clapboard homes in the area, he said. Archerd said La Tuna Canyon homeowners pride themselves on having homes that fit in with the surrounding landscape, instead of showcasing the latest trends in architectural design.

Hamersly said he plans to develop about 15 acres of the property, adding, “The rest of it is hilly, and we don’t want to get into destroying the natural contours of the land.”

His company was granted a zoning change that it sought from the city to increase the number of buildings allowed on a portion of the property. The La Tuna Canyon association, however, has protested the change, contending that it conflicts with a low-density plan adopted for the community.

“We aren’t here to fight the community. We’re not that stupid,” Hamersly said. “I’d be sitting here till I had a beard down my to my navel. We’re not trying to shove anything down anybody’s throat,” he said.

Hamersly would not reveal the specific details of his development, although the city requires that he make public his plans before receiving a building permit.

Greslie, 38, moved to La Tuna Canyon with her family when she was 7 years old. She has since raised five children there who ride their horses along the same trails she took as a child.

Her children, aged 3 to 17, are active in 4-H activities and raise cattle, hogs and lambs for market on the acre of land that surrounds their house. The money they raise from auctioning the animals goes into a savings account earmarked for their college educations, she said.

“It’s still a good place to live,” Greslie said. “We have the rural atmosphere here in the canyon, yet people keep wanting to develop. I feel like they’re invading, I don’t know, sacred ground. I would like to be able to buy it all up and leave it the way it is.”

City officials, often the final decision-makers on whether a proposed plan will come to fruition, grapple with competing desires to keep constituents happy and to nourish economic development.

“Sometimes a developer will come in to La Tuna Canyon and want to provide beautiful homes, but homes more appropriate to Westwood or something, not for an equestrian area,” said Arline De Sanctis, a deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs. “If he comes to the council office, we tell him what’s needed or wanted in the community.”

Many builders request zoning changes or conditional-use permits, which fall in the jurisdiction of the City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee.

If homeowners lobby against an unpopular project, it can be delayed months, years or be defeated altogether. Such was the case in late 1985 when the La Tuna Canyon Community Awareness Assn. fought against a proposed sediment site for flood control in the canyon.

The association, whose membership of 90 families has recently grown to 115, is dedicated to protecting the rural atmosphere of the canyon, Archerd said.

Members hand out information on projects and issues affecting the area, circulate petitions, hold meetings and lobby city officials, he said.

“I don’t think anybody who has seen us work thinks of us as just a bunch of irate homeowners,” Archerd said. “We generally are extremely well-informed and only are asking for things to be done that all other hillside homeowners groups ask for. We’re just trying to make development conform with the community plan and master plan developed for our area.”

The association opposes builders who tamper with the land, which is given to severe flooding, particularly in hilly areas. They are especially against grading of the mountainous terrain, Archerd said.

They lobbied hard for a slope-density ordinance, which was passed in April, 1987, limiting construction on steep hillsides.

Homeowners are also concerned about plans for an 83-acre lot that will be the future home of an evangelical Christian church.

In April, the new owner of the property, Hy Hunter, a self-described international investor and resident of Hawaii, oversaw the grading of the steep land and the removal of debris, according to a Los Angeles building and safety inspector. In May, he was cited by the city for “moving a mountain” without a grading permit.

Hunter said he was merely removing trash in preparation for the church complex.

“We want to preserve 100%,” Hunter said. “We haven’t touched anything that’s natural. The only thing we’ve done is cut the brush along the road and made a fire break, and that’s about it. And we took hundreds of truckloads of trash to the dump.”

He said he chose the isolated spot on La Tuna Canyon Road for a church because of its unspoiled beauty and also because the area seemed receptive to churches. There are four other Christian churches within a few miles of the area.

“We looked all around the Los Angeles area for several years,” Hunter said. “It had to be a place close to nature. I’m an environmentalist also, and I chose the site because it’s in such a lovely area.”

Hunter, 72, said his plans for the church include “a lot of glass, so you can see the valleys and the trees and what have you. We will also have stables there and trails, and I hope that the people in the area will use them too,” he said.

“We’re not against their wanting to build a church on the property,” Archerd said. “The reason we got so irate and so adamant about stopping what was going on is simply because they were doing a tremendous amount of grading without a permit.”

Some residents are less opposed to development than others, accepting growth as an inevitability.

“It’s almost a foregone conclusion that they have to develop the area,” said Connie Beck, who has lived in La Tuna Canyon for 18 years. “Sure, it’s wonderful to have the seclusion, but I think if they do it properly, you can keep the seclusion.”

A soft-spoken woman, Beck lives in a secluded A-frame style house well above the street amid pines and sycamores, with her husband and two Doberman pinschers. The house, built in 1923, has a homey cabin-like feel, with knotty-pine walls, some covered by pictures of her husband and her two grown daughters.

A native of Redondo Beach, Beck has learned to shoot, and treasures her rural home. “You couldn’t drag me back to the beach now,” she said.

Darlene Rickman, who has lived for 10 years at the western end of the canyon, finds that neighbors overcome the isolation by watching out for each other.

“We all look out for one another. If a horse is in trouble, we’ll jump over the fence and help out. That’s what having a neighbor is all about. Everybody is very friendly because that’s what we live here for.”

Rickman, her husband, and her 6-year-old daughter are die-hard equestrians. Their modest two-bedroom house has a barn housing four horses. A rider for 22 years, Rickman speaks with pride of her young daughter’s “whole wall of ribbons” won in horse shows and worries that an increasing number of new residents in the area don’t own horses.

“We realize we’re in a rural area that has lost its rural ability,” Rickman said. “We’re concerned they’re going to do a lot of weird development up here. We try to keep on top of it by going to every stinking meeting, signing petitions and continuing to use the trails. We try to impress on people what’s going to take place if we don’t stay together.”

But Rickman would stop short of becoming a regular at City Hall, as some community activists have done before her.

“I don’t care if my name ever shows up downtown, I’d rather be out riding my horse.”