Group That Foiled Race Track-Golf Course Project Still Teed Off

As members of the Los Alamitos Men’s Golf Club tell it, Hollywood Park Realty really teed them off by suggesting that it could turn the Los Alamitos Race Track and their 160-acre golf course--all of which Hollywood Park owns--into a business park.

That was nearly two years ago.

Wednesday, after collecting thousands of signatures on petitions and waging a successful ballot-measure campaign, club members said they are still incensed at the Los Angeles-based company.

The dispute over closing the golf course, one of the few parcels of open space left in Cypress, brought together a coalition of golfers, preservationists and other concerned residents behind Measure D, the “greenbelt and open space” initiative that passed Tuesday by a vote of 54% to 46%.

The measure requires a public vote on any proposed zoning changes on land designated for public or semipublic use in the city, including parks, schools and the more than 300 acres owned by Hollywood Park. The vote reflects the growing trend in many cities in the county toward slower growth and more intense scrutiny of how government conducts the public’s business.

But organizers said it is also a case of David slaying Goliath with rocks provided by Goliath himself.

“An awful lot of people were scared by some things done in this campaign,” said Roger Geyer, a golfer and co-chairman of the citizens group that organized the effort that led to the ballot measure. “I’m not happy with the way Hollywood Park went about this, but maybe it worked out well for us if it backfired on them.”

Hollywood Park officials could not be reached for comment on Measure D’s passage or on its dispute with the city and the golf club, which has been closed since January.

But Ned Fox, executive director of the Cypress Chamber of Commerce, accused both sides of making misleading statements. Both the chamber and the Cypress school district opposed the measure, saying it would usurp private property rights and would discourage development in the city.

Campaign-disclosure statements show that Hollywood Park spent more than $100,000 to defeat the measure, in a campaign that involved newspaper ads, phone solicitations, flyers and other political mailings.

It was like going one on one with a steamroller, said Joyce Nicholson, co-chairwoman of Concerned Citizens for Greenbelt and Open Space Preservation.

“We started fighting this huge entity--Hollywood Park, with all of its money--and things only seemed to get worse,” Nicholson said.

Attorneys for Hollywood Park filed a lawsuit to block the measure from appearing on the ballot but were unsuccessful. Attorneys then sued the golf club, unsuccessfully arguing that it should have been named a sponsor of the ballot measure.

Last week, the company filed a $125-million lawsuit in federal court alleging that Measure D, if passed, would unfairly deny Hollywood Park Realty the right to develop its land.

Supporters of the measure said company representatives then began telling residents that the suit would be dropped if the measure is defeated. Charles Greenberg, attorney for the concerned citizens group, called the suit a blatant political ploy and a misuse of the court process.

“It appears they filed it just to make an argument in the political fight over the initiative,” Greenberg said.

James Sutherland, a member of Concerned Citizens and also an attorney, said many residents he encountered while urging support of the measure expressed confusion and even fear over flyers put out by Hollywood Park to describe the impact of the measure. The flyers alleged that the city would owe the company millions of dollars if the measure passed and that taxpayers would be liable, a charge supporters dispute.

One flyer asks: “Are you willing to pay $5,000 for a few golfers to play golf?”

“I think what they did was pretty underhanded,” Sutherland said. “I have been told that these kinds of tactics are common among developers in this area. If that’s so, then we have a major problem with the electoral process.”

The chamber’s Fox said: “I think the voters were confused, and didn’t like the tactics on either side. But I don’t believe Hollywood Park used scare tactics. Using a figure of $5,000 per taxpayer is not a scare tactic, since we don’t know how any case that is pursued will be resolved.”

Fox also said he has already heard from major companies that have indicated a reluctance to come into the city because of the measure.

“There have been indications already of companies waiting to see what the results will be,” Fox said. “Companies who might want to come in will think long and hard before wasting a lot of time and money, only to be subject to voters who say ‘no go.’ ”

Measure D is only the latest ripple in a wave of land-use rules being established in California cities, Greenberg said.

“We are going through a time when a lot of people in California feel the quality of life is deteriorating with growth,” he said. “We’re seeing this slow-growth movement in election after election.”

Nicholson said the City Council has not done the best job of protecting the city’s scarce land area and said more and more people have a real concern about how the city is being run. She said the citizens group will next start a petition drive for a traffic control initiative that would block new development until current traffic problems are resolved.

“We’re just common folks here in Cypress, and we beat them on Measure D with shoe leather and very little else,” Nicholson said. “But people are much more aware of what is going on than they were before.”