Builders’ Plan Angers Park Defenders

‘We’re talking about a road that would take out 35 acres of land, cut down a 250-foot hill and fill a canyon, and we’re supposed to get a couple of restrooms in exchange?’

David M. Brown,Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation president

The U. S. Department of the Interior is coming under criticism from local homeowners and environmentalists for asking the National Park Service to consider a controversial proposal for a road through Cheeseboro Canyon Park that critics say would benefit two developers.

Critics say the road would irreparably harm the federally owned park near Agoura Hills and ruin Jordan Ranch, a nearby wilderness area that the Park Service wants to buy and preserve as parkland.

“They’re willing to carve a gash through an existing national park in order to open for development an equally beautiful canyon that is slated for addition” to the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, David M. Brown, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, said. “The road in no way helps people get access to Cheeseboro park. It’s purely for the interests of the developer.”

Brown, whose federation comprises 13 homeowners’ groups in the area, described the proposed road as “the worst kind of giveaway.”

More Visitors?

The developers, Potomac Investment Associates of Potomac, Md., and the PGA Tour Inc. of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., want permission from the Park Service to build a road through the southwestern edge of the pristine park.

Some Interior Department officials said they want the road considered because it may open the park to more visitors. The developers have offered to build restrooms, parking lots, an interpretive center and a range of facilities that would improve the public’s access to Cheeseboro Canyon Park, the officials said.

The local Park Service office had rejected the developers’ request in April, saying it was of no benefit to the public, at whose expense the 2,100-acre park was purchased for about $13 million.

In July, a top Interior Department official backed the Park Service and even speculated that allowing the road construction could be illegal.

But local Park Service officials were ordered in August to reopen consideration after a Ventura attorney with close ties to a former secretary of the Interior asked high-ranking department officials in Washington for help in the matter, according to documents and interviews with officials.

The developers want to build 1,800 luxury homes and a tournament players’ championship golf course on Jordan Ranch, a 2,300-acre tract in Palo Comado Canyon just west of Cheeseboro Canyon, said Dan Kuehn, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, part of the Park Service. The Park Service has said it wants to acquire the land for park use if it ever gets the money from Congress.

The developer and PGA Tour have an option to purchase the land, which is in Ventura County and owned by entertainer Bob Hope.

The road, to be constructed at developer expense, would cut through the southwestern part of Cheeseboro Canyon Park and link the proposed homes and golf course to the Ventura Freeway. It would extend Liberty Canyon Road, which now dead-ends south of the freeway, by about three miles, with slightly less than a mile of that within the park’s boundaries, Kuehn said.

Without approval for the road, the developers would have to purchase rights of way from about 40 landowners to extend Chesebro Road about half a mile into Jordan Ranch. That would prove far too expensive, the developers told Kuehn.

One of those who approached Kuehn to seek permission to build the road was Ventura attorney William D. Fairfield, a former law partner of William P. Clark Jr., secretary of the Interior from 1983 to 1985.

After Kuehn vetoed the project, Fairfield, who represents the PGA Tour, wrote to William P. Horn, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, who oversees the Park Service.

Easement Sought

In the April 30 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, Fairfield said he was writing at Clark’s suggestion to inquire about purchasing or obtaining an easement across Cheeseboro Canyon for construction of the road. The letter notes that Kuehn was “not encouraging” and requested a meeting with Horn to discuss the matter.

Interior Department officials said Fairfield subsequently met with Horn and, last month, Kuehn was ordered by Lowell White, then-acting regional director of the Park Service’s Western office in San Francisco, to reconsider the proposal.

Kuehn said he was told to give the proposal “a fair look with an open mind.”

“That isn’t why we bought the land,” said Kuehn, who opposes the proposed road. “It sets a horrible precedent for us to let a road go through our property for development elsewhere.”

Rorie Skei, vice chairman of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that acquires mountain land for public hiking and equestrian trails, criticized what she characterized as “political pressure being brought on the Park Service . . . to serve some developer.”

“I think it’s very shabby,” Skei said. “We have this area that everyone’s worked so hard to acquire, and then to have this back-door effort that would damage the park in order to serve some developer really bothers me. What kind of precedent is that?”

But Gene Holloway, an owner of Potomac Investment Associates, said, “One thing that occurred to us, there’s a piece of ground out there that is a national recreation area that is practically inaccessible. The road would allow more visitors to come to Cheeseboro Canyon.”

The Jordan Ranch parcel is within the boundary of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a patchwork of 150,000 acres of public and privately owned land that spans 50 miles from Griffith Park to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

Park officials hope to preserve about 60% of the land for public use. The rest would remain in private ownership.

The Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy have unsuccessfully tried for years to persuade Hope to sell or donate part of the land so that it can be preserved as a wildlife habitat and public recreation area, Kuehn said.

‘Keep Area Primitive’

The park now has a dirt road restricted to hikers, horseback riders and emergency vehicles. It has minimal parking, no restrooms with running water or flush toilets, no ranger station and no interpretive facilities. None is planned because “we want to keep the area primitive,” Kuehn said.

One park ranger, who asked not to be named, said a road would “just destroy this place” by creating smog, traffic and crowds. “It would destroy one of the best wildlife areas in the region,” the ranger said.

Both Cheeseboro Canyon and Jordan Ranch, which environmentalists say is a mirror image of Cheeseboro Canyon, are major links in a wildlife corridor connecting the Santa Monica Mountains to the Santa Susana and San Gabriel mountains, Kuehn said.

The area is home to a large number of birds and animals, including hawks, owls, golden eagles, deer, fox, wildcat, bobcat, mule deer and coyote.

The flat-bottomed, grassy canyon park also has one of the largest concentrations of native valley oaks and coast live oaks in Southern California, including some estimated to be 300 to 400 years old, with girths of up to 12 feet, park officials say.

Ecological Area

Because of the ancient oaks, the Jordan Ranch property is designated a significant sensitive ecological area under Ventura County zoning laws, which means the land will get special consideration before development is permitted.

After Kuehn vetoed the road proposal in April, a high-ranking Department of the Interior official also rejected it, but her decision was reversed by other Interior officials.

In a July 1 letter to Fairfield, Susan Recce, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, wrote: “To provide your client with access would be an irrevocable commitment of land, which was purchased for other public purposes.”

“It is our understanding that no advantage would accrue to the public or the recreation area. . . . We believe that the proposed access route is intended primarily to ease development design needs.

“Under these circumstances, it is not legally possible to grant or convey an interest in federal property,” Recce wrote.

Equal Value

In an interview, Recce said it would be illegal for the Department of the Interior to give up Park Service property unless something of equal value were received in return.

Such a transaction would require approval of the Park Service director and legal experts in Washington, she said.

Despite Recce’s warning, an Aug. 13 letter from White to Fairfield said, “I have asked the National Park Service to take another look at your proposal to develop an access across National Park Service property to the Jordan Ranch property.”

Horn’s assistant, Allan Fitzsimmons, said Recce sent her July letter without being aware of a June 4 meeting in Washington. At that meeting, Fairfield, Horn and Fitzsimmons discussed the possibility that the developer could provide restrooms, interpretive centers or other improvements in exchange for building the road, Fitzsimmons said.

Fitzsimmons denied that there was any improper influence. “We get calls every day from government officials and from former government officials,” he said.

‘Maybe Negotiate’

“There was no dictate that you will work something out or do something. It was simply, ‘Hey, maybe we can sit down and negotiate something.’ We’re not telling the Park Service to do something other than, ‘Hey, guys, let’s come to the table and talk.’ ”

Potomac’s Holloway said the proposed road is only one of several options being considered by the company, and described the inquiry with the Park Service and Interior officials as preliminary.

“We went to them with the view that this was good for them and this was good for us, period. The local fellow out there was negatively inclined. Somebody more senior in the Park Service thought this was something that might have some appeal,” Holloway said.

Kuehn said restrooms, interpretive centers and other such facilities could not begin to compensate the Park Service for the cost of the parkland that would be harmed by the road.

“We paid $23,700 per acre” for lower Cheeseboro Canyon, Kuehn said. “You can do your own math.”

Parkland Destroyed

Brown, of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, said the parkland that would be destroyed by the road is worth more than half a million dollars.

“We’re talking about a road that would take out 35 acres of land, cut down a 250-foot hill and fill a canyon, and we’re supposed to get a couple of restrooms in exchange for that?” Brown complained, referring to estimates made by his group of the road’s effect.

Holloway took note of the opposition, saying: “Anytime anybody’s got a piece of property that big, neighbors would prefer that it stay pastoral and have cows on it.”

The 1,800-acre upper Cheeseboro Canyon part of the park was purchased from a real estate development firm for $5 million in 1981. The Park Service was criticized for agreeing to pay a record $8 million for the canyon’s 336-acre lower part in January, 1985.

The seller of the land, Jerry Y. Oren, was ordered last week to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution and fines and was placed on five years probation after his conviction in federal court July 15 for fraudulently inflating the price of the property by more than $2 million.

Land in Trade

Fitzsimmons said Potomac and the PGA Tour might also offer land in trade for the road easement, and Kuehn said the Park Service might consider it. But neither was able to detail the land that might be offered or accepted.

Fitzsimmons said the federal government cannot legally give property away, but said a 1968 amendment to the Land and Water Conservation Act empowers the secretary of the Interior to make exchanges of land or interest in land when such an exchange is in the public interest.

Ultimately, it would take an act of Congress to approve a land swap in exchange for building the proposed road through the park.

George Berklacy, assistant to the director of the Park Service in Washington, said, “This is federal land. Congress established the Santa Monica Mountains as public property. That’s a national park, and to make any adjustments in the boundary, that constitutes a boundary change, and that cannot be done without ratification by Congress.”