What a Guy : They Didn’t Come to Picket This Developer but to Praise Him

The activist homeowners broke through a fence Friday to get to a scenic Newhall hillside soon to become the site of a big apartment complex.

They rallied beneath the branches of a huge, old oak, vowing to save trees such as this from the chain saws of development.

And, when the developer arrived, the homeowners surged toward him.

But in their hands they carried a plaque, not picket signs, and lavished words of praise, instead of protest, upon Seymour Braverman of SHB Financial Corp. in North Hollywood.

“All too often we hear about developers cutting down oak trees. But here’s someone who has done quite the contrary . . . ,” said Stephen Schafhausen, president of the Placerita Canyon Property Owners Assn.

The same homeowner group, which spent most of the past year fighting construction of a power plant proposed by Tenneco Oil Co. in Santa Clarita’s Placerita Canyon, on Friday handed out a new prize, the Golden Oak Award.

The award was created by the association to recognize businesses and developers who go out of their way to preserve oaks in Santa Clarita, Schafhausen said.

It took a year to find a developer worthy of the award, said Laurene Weste, association vice president.

Braverman earned the award by designing a 65-unit senior citizens’ apartment complex around 16 oaks that dot the building’s 4-acre lot, which has been fenced off near Market Street and Newhall Avenue. The circumference of the biggest tree is 200 inches.

The newly elected Santa Clarita City Council has slapped a temporary moratorium on the felling of oaks while a permanent oak preservation ordinance is drafted, but Braverman could have opted to delay construction until the law is enacted.

This would have enabled him to apply for a permit to remove the trees, which would have made it possible to build more apartments.

Instead, Braverman ordered his architect to cut the size of the project so that the trees would not have to be cut down. He will build an L-shaped development, instead of a box-like structure of 100 apartments.

“Right from the beginning, I never thought of cutting down the trees,” Braverman said. “I know people don’t like to see any tree destroyed, and I don’t like to fight with people. Landscaping is always a trademark on all my projects.”