Neighbors to Fight Developer for Right to Be in Calabasas

A developer’s refusal to scale down a planned 1,500-home project in Calabasas Park has fueled a last-minute spurt of interest in cityhood for a 14-square-mile part of Calabasas.

Homeowners angered by visions of traffic jams and flattened hilltops have pledged to fight the builder’s effort next week to withdraw his project site from the proposed city.

They say they want locally elected city council members to decide the size and design of the proposed 1,300-acre Baldwin Co. subdivision in the center of the tentatively approved City of Calabasas.

Baldwin officials have asked Los Angeles County’s Local Agency Formation Commission to exclude their site when the panel meets Wednesday to adopt final city boundaries. That action will pave the way for an incorporation election next year.

Executives of the Irvine-based development company contend that including the project site in the new city would cost them millions of dollars by delaying their project for up to four years.

High Quality Pledged

Company leaders met Thursday night with 250 Calabasas Park residents to plead their case--and to pledge that their development will be of high quality and low impact.

But members of the influential Calabasas Park Homeowners Assn. were not mollified.

After unsuccessfully appealing to Baldwin representatives to halve the project, group members voted unanimously to oppose it. Then, in a spur-of-the-moment move, homeowners contributed $7,000, with checks ranging up to $1,000, to start an anti-development defense fund.

After the meeting, residents took pro-cityhood petitions and signed up for bus rides to Wednesday’s LAFCO meeting, scheduled for 9 a.m. at the County Hall of Administration in Los Angeles.

Many pledged to flood the commission office with phone calls and letters supporting adoption of the entire proposed city area, including the Baldwin site. Commissioners voted tentatively on Aug. 26 to include the site in the city limits, saying they would consider exclusion requests at Wednesday’s final hearing.

Cityhood committee member Arnold Sank of Calabasas Park said several landowners are asking to have their properties excluded. But he said Baldwin’s pullout would most seriously damage the cityhood effort.

Besides effectively cutting off existing neighborhoods in the western half of Calabasas from the proposed city, a Baldwin withdrawal would severely limit tax revenues that west-side businesses would generate for the new city.

Baldwin project chief James Harter sought to defuse the issue by promising homeowners that the new homes would closely resemble the $500,000 already built in 1,300-home Calabasas Park.

Harter said his company does not oppose incorporation. But he said it is worried that cityhood would delay the project four years by halting construction until a permanent master plan is adopted by the city.

He said his firm has offered to allocate a 200-foot-wide strip along the Ventura Freeway to connect the east half of Calabasas with the west half to prevent western homes and businesses from being excluded.

Cityhood chairman Robert Hill said his committee will study the strip proposal. But he said panel members feel strongly that the Baldwin project will heavily affect Calabasas and therefore should come under city jurisdiction.

Members of the homeowners association, many of whom have largely remained silent on cityhood, voiced agreement.

“This is the last chance for us if we want to enjoy the community we live in,” said one of them, dentist Marvin Canter.

Another, lawyer Richard Tarlow, said overdevelopment is ruining Calabasas’ rural atmosphere.

“By God, I’m tired of it,” Tarlow told Harter. “I’ll fight like hell to stop it.”