Calabasas Site : 2 Sides Far Apart Over School Move

Los Angeles County officials have taken steps to referee a dispute between a North Hollywood private school that wants to move to Calabasas and a Calabasas neighborhood that wants to keep it out.

Both sides in the growing dispute have accused the other of lying about the controversial $15-million relocation plan for Oakwood School, a private elementary and secondary school whose students include many celebrities’ children.

School officials say their plans for a heavily landscaped 682-pupil campus on a 17 1/2-acre site next to Old Topanga Canyon Road would enhance the neighborhood and protect it from noise and traffic problems.

But homeowners contend that the school would intrude on the rural tranquility of a nearby luxury subdivision by choking local streets with traffic and littering them with teen-agers’ trash. The campus site is zoned for houses.

Each side claims that the other won’t discuss the project in a forthright manner.

The County Board of Supervisors will vote Feb. 11 on a conditional-use permit for the project. Aides to Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents Calabasas, said Wednesday they will arrange a face-to-face meeting between the two sides next month.

Knowledge of Proposal

“If the meeting results in a compromise, fine,” said David Vannatta, a land-use specialist on Antonovich’s staff. “It appears that many of the opponents do not know what’s being proposed.”

Oakwood officials say they sought to arrange a community meeting four weeks ago to solicit homeowners’ views. But they say it was a failure.

“About 20 people were there. They told us that, on advice of their counsel, they couldn’t comment on the plans,” said James Alan Astman, Oakwood’s headmaster. “We were all incredulous.”

Astman said school officials have made major changes to landscaping and lighting in recent months to make the plan acceptable to homeowners. He said officials are willing to consider additional adjustments.

“It’s very difficult trying to carry on a conversation with people who won’t talk to you,” Astman said.

But homeowners say a school official turned down an opportunity to speak at a community meeting last week at Calabasas High School.

“We’ve been really trying to work with the school,” said Steve Casden, one of the nearby residents.

Neighbor Rosemary Lichtman said residents have been unable to pin down Oakwood officials on their project plans. Lichtman charged that Oakwood officials have misled Calabasas residents about problems the school has had in North Hollywood.

“We asked a sincere question and were told they never had any problem in the community and that’s just not true,” Lichtman said.

She said Oakwood students have caused noise and litter problems in North Hollywood that resulted in formation of student work crews “to clean up the mess” in a Magnolia Boulevard neighborhood.

Letters Faulted

Lichtman also charged that an Oakwood administrator and a school trustee failed to identify themselves fully when they wrote letters to the county supporting the Calabasas project. The writers instead identified themselves as Calabasas-area residents who were “pleased to learn” that Oakwood was moving to Calabasas, she said.

Astman said the letters from the administrator and the trustee were picked without his knowledge by an outside consultant to be included in an informational brochure given to county planning commissioners.

“I don’t see anything duplicitous in those letters,” Astman said.

According to Astman, much of the North Hollywood litter his students cleaned up this year at the suggestion of the North Hollywood Residents Assn. may have come from students at nearby North Hollywood High School.

He said the association recently wrote the school to say it was sorry to learn that Oakwood is leaving the neighborhood. The letter thanked Oakwood for being “such good neighbors over the years,” Astman said.

Astman said he hopes school supporters help “to dispel the fallacious information put forth” by the school’s opponents.