Park in Fragments : Stalled Santa Monica Mountains Project at Crossroads, Beset by Problems

Sunday is family day for Allan Kakassy, his wife, Maria, and their three girls. Each week, they leave the ordered suburbs of the San Fernando Valley in search of a wild, untended spot that, in Kakassy’s words, “I can remember and picture in my mind when things are tough at work.”

Their luck was bad the day they went for a walk in a federal park in the western Santa Monica Mountains, half an hour’s drive from home.

At first, they were delighted. A bright lime-colored frog hopped over Maria’s shoe. A brown funnel spider hid next to a rock. A string of tiny black circles, some creature’s eggs, looped through a puddle in the middle of the muddy trail.

Such wonders, however, were overwhelmed by the roar of nearby traffic. The family finally left the noise behind, only to be ambushed by frustration again. Their path ended abruptly at a white-rail fence that marked the edge of the park and the beginning of private land.

And so the Kakassys were forced to turn back. They were victims of the problems that have plagued the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area from the start: a federal budget crunch, soaring land prices, competition from developers, political meddling and, in at least one instance, outright fraud.

The result is a $68-million series of unconnected park fragments bearing little resemblance to the urban wilderness that environmentalists expected Congress to create. Instead the troubled 10-year history of the recreation area offers a textbook lesson in how not to build a park.

‘An Insult to Integrity’

“The Santa Monicas, in their current state, are an insult to the integrity of the national park system,” a National Park Service official said.

The constant setbacks have brought the project to a crossroads.

Concerned administrators and lawmakers in Washington are pressing for a re-evaluation of the park’s ambitious goals. They talk of adjusting to reality and slashing the amount of land to be acquired.

“We have to look at it from a national point of view. We can’t afford to spend all our money in Los Angeles,” said National Park Service Director William Penn Mott Jr. “It’s not going to be possible to get some of these things.”

Alarmed environmentalists are mustering for battle. They wonder whether the proposed down-scaling of the park would be its salvation or its destruction.

“We’re muffing it. We’re blowing it,” said David Brown, a civic activist and adviser to the Sierra Club on the recreation area. “I really sense this park sliding away. There isn’t enough of a park for large numbers of users. It’s vulnerable because there’s nothing to rally around.”

Townhouses Coming

In Los Angeles County, the Park Service has cast its eye on some of the most valuable property in the United States, with views of the Pacific Ocean and the storied beach communities of Malibu.

A rustic region within commuting distance of a major city is a nice place to hike but it is also an appealing place to live. When the bidding escalates, the government rarely comes out the winner.

Where the park entrance was to be, wooden frames, stacks of tile roofing, a stream of banners and a billboard announce that townhouses are coming. Offices have already been built nearby.

The proposed park headquarters site was sold in 1986 to Tokyo-based Soka University.

After the Soka sale, Mott concluded that there was little reason to pursue an adjacent 272 acres, though he described it as “one of the choice pieces in the Santa Monicas.” In June, he dropped a six-year effort to buy the land. The owner has permits to build 34 homes.

The Park Service also tried to buy the ranch beyond the fence that barred the Kakassys’ way. If the government had purchased the property as planned, the family could have hiked farther into an oak-studded valley. At the base of a mitten-shaped hill, they could have explored a cave adorned by Indian paintings, more than two centuries old, of Spanish explorers on horseback.

Assisted by Udall

The owner, Ronald Semler, wanted to live and raise horses there. He refused to sell.

Like several of the others who resisted Park Service overtures, he had influential help. In 1980, Semler’s representative to the Park Service was Stewart L. Udall, secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969.

More recently, George Murphy Dunne Jr. the owner of a 10-acre ridgetop fought off a condemnation effort--the first in the Santa Monicas--with the help of various Chicago political figures with whom he has close ties.

Dunne’s father is president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners (Chicago’s equivalent of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors) and Cook County Democratic Chairman. Rep. Sidney R. Yates, who represents a Chicago lakefront district, got Congress to accuse the Park Service of a “policy and practice of harassment of landowners” in the Santa Monicas and placed new limits on the service’s authority to condemn land there.

Now, the Park Service faces the loss of still more opportunities.

The service does not have the $14-million asking price for the 300-acre site of the annual Renaissance Pleasure Faire, which is next to the federally owned Paramount Ranch. The owner has applied for permits for 160 houses there.

1,800 Houses, Golf Course

Developers have lobbied the Interior Department for permission to build a road across a corner of the government’s Cheeseboro Canyon Park. The road would enable construction of 1,800 houses and a golf course on adjacent Jordan Ranch--another piece the Park Service wants for the recreation area.

In 1978, the future of the region seemed settled. Congress sent in the National Park Service to finish what the California government had started with three large state parks in the Santa Monicas: Topanga, Malibu Creek and Point Mugu, which cover a total of about 28,000 acres.

The mission was to forge a network of federal, state and local parks, linked by trails, over roughly two-thirds of the 150,000 acres of mountain and beach between Point Mugu and Griffith Park.

The remaining mountain land would remain privately owned, a mix of celebrity estates, suburban tracts, old-timers’ ramshackle cabins and religious retreats.

The job was to be done by 1983. So far, however, the federal government has added only 13,000 acres to the Santa Monicas park supply.

The setbacks started almost immediately.

Only $16 Million Available

In 1980, when the Park Service was ready to start buying Santa Monicas land, Congress appropriated $35 million, but only $20.7 million got to the park after the Reagan Administration went to work on the deficit. The next year, the park was to get $30.2 million, but the budget crisis left only $16 million available.

By 1985, Congress was allocating $8.1 million for the mountains; 1986, $7.9 million; 1987, $6 million; 1988, $1 million.

Congressional staffers say the Santa Monicas were a particularly easy target for budget-trimmers after the July conviction of Encino developer Jerry Y. Oren for fraudulently inflating the value of his property in Cheeseboro Canyon by more than $2 million. The Park Service bought the land in 1985 for $8 million, despite warnings by a government appraiser that the price was much too high.

Fingers point elsewhere, too, when blame is meted out for the park’s current state: At the Park Service, for failing to push unwilling sellers or even condemn important property. And at local governments, for failing to buy much parkland on their own and for approving building permits in the Santa Monicas, making the task for other agencies that much harder.

All this time, prices have been skyrocketing. The original estimate for completing the park was $155 million. By 1980, Park Service planners thought the amount was closer to $667 million.

No one knows for sure what the cost would be today.

Much in Backcountry

Of the parkland that has already been acquired, much is in rugged backcountry used only by the most dedicated hikers and equestrians . . . if they can find the parks at all.

No signs point the way to mountain parks from the two major roads flanking the hills, the Ventura Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway. Consequently, park officials say, the recreation area draws most of its visitors from the nearby, generally affluent sections of Malibu, the Westside and the San Fernando Valley. They are the people most likely to happen upon the parks accidentally.

Sierra Club hikes and a few programs for inner-city schoolchildren get some others to the parks. But National Park Service Director Mott said he’d like to see the park draw many more visitors from throughout the region it was meant to serve.

Mott, however, hesitates to publicize the park. “How can we invite people to use it at this point? There is intermittent private property. They might trespass,” he said.

Besides, he added, many of the properties lack restrooms, parking and other facilities needed by the public. “We’ve been putting all the dollars into land. Basically, we just aren’t ready for them,” he said.

Mott has commissioned a revised land-buying plan that would allow federal holdings to increase only by 6,900 acres, to about 20,000 acres--less than half the amount originally envisioned. At most, there would be 57,000 federal and state-owned acres in the recreation area, less than two-thirds of the first estimates.

Zuma and Trancas Canyons

According to the new plan, “the state parks would still be the guts of the (national) park,” said Willis Kriz, park service land acquisition chief. The federal government would develop a fourth node, in the adjoining Zuma and Trancas canyons in Malibu, where the park service and state already own about 5,000 acres. The Backbone Trail would connect the parks.

Park service planners estimate the cost of the additions in the revised plan at anywhere from $44 million to $76 million. They are trying now to pinpoint the price tag more accurately.

Mott also wants to see “some refinement” of the map his local officials have drawn up. Some land already owned by the Park Service that does not adjoin other park property could be traded or sold, he said. And he thinks still more land on the wish list might be dropped, particularly in the eastern, already urbanized sections of the mountains.

He expects a finished plan within months. Once that’s done, Mott said, “we should go to Congress and ask for this and say we want to consolidate some of these fragments. And then we should say, that’s it. There won’t be any more.”

In Mott’s opinion, the end result would provide plenty of space. He has believed that since he was California’s state parks director, under then-Gov. Reagan, when he told Interior Department officials that the state parks were perfectly adequate and a national park was unnecessary.

After all, for Angelenos, “the Santa Monica Mountains are not that important for recreation,” Mott said. “If it’s a nice day, where do they go? The beach. If they have a little time, they go to the Sierras.”

‘You Must Have the Vision’

Such sentiments horrify many longtime backers of the park. Even with its drawbacks, the park network draws about 1 million visitors a year, they note.

“You must have the vision to see what your needs are going to be in the future,” said Margot Feuer, a former member of the recreation area citizen’s advisory commission. “More people will be here and they’ll need a place to get away.”

“Most of the open space you see in the Santa Monicas now is not publicly owned,” added Nancy Ehorn, who resigned last month as assistant superintendent for the recreation area--in part because she was discouraged about the park’s prospects. “That land is going to be developed. When it’s gone, you can’t replace it.”

Birds and animals, too, need room to roam. They must be able to find food and mates, and they need escape routes during the inevitable brush fires.

Two or three pairs of golden eagles, for example, nest in Malibu Creek State Park and hunt frequently in nearby rolling meadowland that was a high priority for the National Park Service. Mott’s revision drops the property from the park service wish list. At least one owner in the area has permits to build luxury homes.

“If these open hilly areas are covered, developed, I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the golden eagles disappeared as a breeding bird from the Santa Monicas,” said Kimball Garrett, an ornithologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Somne Rarities Survive

Already, over the last 15 years, he has seen construction banish the horned lark from the mountains. “It used to be very common in winter,” he said.

Other rarities have survived, so far. A few steelhead trout, giant fish that migrate between fresh water and the open sea, spawn in a creek at the base of a state-owned canyon. Lyon’s Pentachaeta, a low-growing sunflower that qualifies for state protection, appears in one federal park and in another isolated valley.

Within sight of the Ventura Freeway, clinging to a cliff, is the Agoura live-forever, a two-inch-high, cactus-like plant, each blossom’s yellow petals surrounding a dry, thin spike. It has not been seen in any other area on Earth.

All of these probably will be affected as the untouched lands dropped from the parks give way to homes and roads.

Critics also say Mott’s plan should pay attention to the type of property, as well as the amount, targeted for acquisition.

The plan excludes the costly flat land in favor of comparatively inexpensive cliffs and canyon walls. That leaves little room for people who simply want to picnic, throw a Frisbee or take a stroll in rustic surroundings before--or instead of--venturing onto the trails.

‘Fabulous Back Yard’

Mott’s plan creates a park “that would be beautiful, but it wouldn’t be as usable,” Brown said.

To Elizabeth Wiechec, executive director of a nonprofit trust holding open space in the hills, the dependence on backcountry “means whoever ends up living in there is going to have a fabulous back yard at taxpayers’ expense.”

The supporters of the early vision of the park are preparing now to fight the calls for change and to press for a steady infusion of cash.

They pin their hopes partly on a state parks bond initiative on the June ballot that would direct more than $30 million to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The state agency has already bought 5,000 acres in the mountains.

But Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, said he’d rather not use bond money to buy property dropped from the Park Service list. His agency, which is supposed to expire in 1990, is charged only with holding property until the Park Service or the state Department of Parks and Recreation gets enough money to acquire it.

Indeed, if the Park Service doesn’t get more money by the end of the year, the Conservancy might have to use bond revenue--if the initiative passes--simply to hold on to land it already has. The agency was counting on federal reimbursements for hundreds of acres in Malibu’s Lower Zuma Canyon and at Studio City’s Wilacre Park.

‘Our Plans Based on Their Plans’

The situation leaves Edmiston fuming. “I don’t want to let the feds off the hook,” he said. “We made our plans based on their plans.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of organizations that use the Santa Monicas, from the California Native Plant Society to Equestrian Trails Inc., has formed to lobby locally and in Washington.

The coalition, called Save the Mountain Park, is supported by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Marvin Braude and Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson, a Tarzana Democrat who co-authored the bill that established the recreation area.

The members agree with Mott that Congress should earmark a substantial amount for buying Santa Monicas land in 1989. “We think, though, that this should be a significant step in an ongoing effort,” said Beilenson aide Joan Shaffran. The group talks of 90,000 acres of park property.

“It’s 1978 all over again except for one difference,” Jo Kitz, organizer of the coalition wrote in a letter to members. “In 1978 we predicted the park would be a success. In 1988 we need only to demonstrate that the prediction was accurate.”

That will be no easy task.

No Money Recommended

Both Mott’s plan and the coalition’s depend on an influx of money, soon.

Their cause would be helped if national environmental groups are successful in attempts to persuade Congress that the hundreds of millions of dollars in the Land and Water Conservation Fund, financed by offshore oil leasing revenues, should be readily available for parks.

For now, the Administration has recommended no money at all for buying property in the Santa Monica Mountains in 1989.

In coming months, as Congress hammers out its own budget, “I hope we can find something for the Santa Monicas,” said Rep. Yates, who chairs the House interior appropriations subcommittee.

Said Rep. Ralph Regula (D-Ohio), another subcommittee member: ‘It gets more expensive every year. We’ll be taking a long, close look.”