Planners Seek More Data on Proposal for Luxury Homes

Expressing concerns about potential environmental damage and fire and flood danger, Los Angeles County planners postponed action Wednesday on a proposal to build 160 luxury homes on the Renaissance Pleasure Faire site in Agoura.

After an emotional hearing lasting more than three hours, the county Regional Planning Commission voted 4 to 0 to delay action until April 21 to give it time to obtain more information about the effects of the project.

Developer Brian Heller and landowner Art Whizin are seeking permission to build a gated community with houses, tennis courts and equestrian facilities on the 320-acre site, which is rented to the sponsors of the fair.

Heller wants to remove 159 of 549 oaks, many of which are 500 years old, and grade hills containing about 1.7 million cubic yards of dirt, said Nick Hasselkus, county senior planner.

Clinton Ternstrom, commission vice president, said he wanted more information about Heller’s plans to blast into volcanic bedrock slopes on the site.

“I have some very grave concerns about what you’re doing to the natural landscape,” Ternstrom told Heller. The commissioner also said he fears the project will cause flooding and erosion.

Betty Fisher, commission president, said she is worried that the development could increase danger of brush fires.

Fisher also said that, if a brush fire occurs, there could be “problems with evacuation of people and animals.”

But Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Les Lackerman said development “actually creates fire breaks which make it safer.”

The fair site is in the northwestern Santa Monica Mountains next to Paramount Ranch, a national park.

The proposed development has drawn opposition from neighbors, who say the new homes will be visible from their property, as well as fans of the annual fair, which moved to the site 23 years ago. Held every spring, the fair celebrates Elizabethan England, featuring food, entertainment and costumes of the period.

Wendy Brogan, an engineer representing Heller, told commissioners that Heller has reduced the proposed level of slopes so houses will not be visible from the national park. She said she has letters from more than 60 nearby residents who support the project.

Karen Pokraka, a Los Angeles resident who supports the fair, said the commission “is talking about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. . . . Millions of people have enjoyed that property, not just 160 families who have the money to purchase houses,” she said.

Cal Peterson, who said he represented more than 300 homeowners in the Malibu Lake area of Agoura, criticized Heller’s plan to widen and deepen Medea Creek and encase it in concrete.

“Tampering with Medea Creek could hurt fish, game, birds and wildlife” and cause flooding and erosion in the national park and Malibu Lake, which is downstream from the property, Peterson said.

Residents living near the private lake already spend thousands of dollars annually to clean silt from the lake caused by developments upstream, Peterson said. “Every development that goes in causes us extreme hardship.”

Peterson and other project opponents also said the project is in a flood plain, a claim Heller disputed. Heller said the project will help, not hurt, Medea Creek and said the houses would be placed 30 to 35 feet above the flood plain.

Other opponents said the commission has not adequately looked into the archeological significance of the property.

Although most of those who testified opposed the project, Ron Waters, who lives near the park, told commissioners he welcomes the development because “it will eliminate some very, very obnoxious things that occur on the property,” including traffic generated by the fair.

Waters said residents are also concerned with parties and drinking that occur on the site and in the national park throughout the year.

Commissioners have said that by law, their decision cannot be influenced by desires to preserve the land for the fair or the U. S. Park Service.