Planning Official Bars Developer From Felling Tree : Canyon Country Mall Plan Must Bow to Old Oak

A 300-year-old oak, in the way of a proposed shopping mall in Canyon Country, was spared from a developer’s ax Tuesday by a Los Angeles County planning official.

John Huttinger, Regional Planning Department hearing officer, ordered the developer to modify his controversial design to accommodate the oak.

Huttinger said he will allow the developer to cut one of the lower branches of the tree and do minor pruning to make way for a walkway. But nothing can be done to weaken the healthy oak, he said.

The developer also was ordered to preserve a grove of eight smaller oaks in a corner of the proposed 2.5-acre project on Soledad Canyon Road.

About a dozen area residents attended Tuesday’s Department of Regional Planning meeting, urging that the developer avoid tampering with the oak.

‘A Definite Victory’

The residents, who since July have protested the felling of the large oak, read a statement from a tree specialist who said that substantially trimming the tree might shorten its life.

“Had there been no opposition, I would still have imposed these conditions,” Huttinger said.

The residents called the decision a victory for the community.

“The community didn’t want to see this tree go to the ax just because of inflexibility of design,” said Michael Lyons, a member of the Santa Clarita Valley’s planning advisory committee to the county Regional Planning Commission.

“This was a definite victory. Basically, we got everything we wanted. The oak tree preservation movement has set another precedent,” Lyons said.

But Joseph Kashani, the shopping mall’s developer, said after the hearing: “This tree is getting famous in Southern California, and only because a couple of people have fallen in love with the tree.”

“An oak tree is an oak tree is an oak tree,” Kashani said. “We’ve got thousands of them in L. A. County.”

Kashani, owner of La Pico Construction Co. in Beverly Hills, said Huttinger’s decision was unfair. He said that returning to the drawing board may cause costly project delay and a loss of tenants.

“We have been trying to compromise from the beginning to decide how to save this tree,” Kashani said.

The developer originally asked to remove all the oaks from the property, said Robert R. Sims, La Pico engineering consultant.

A plan submitted at Tuesday’s meeting called for relocating eight oaks in the grove and retaining the large tree. That plan proposed cutting back the large oak to about half its size so it could be enclosed by the glass walls of surrounding buildings.

Huttinger rejected that plan and suggested that the developer build a two-story project. However, the developer’s consultant said it was unlikely that Huttinger’s suggestion would be implemented. He maintained that a two-story shopping center is unattractive to tenants.

L-Shaped Layout

“The second story, for some reason, does not lease very well in the Santa Clarita Valley, or at least in this area,” Sims said. The desired configuration would be three buildings arranged in the shape of an “L,” he said.

The tree was saved from being one of an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 oaks that have been destroyed in the last five years to make way for development, according to Canyon Country residents at the hearing.