Developer Sweetens Parkland Swap Offer

A developer has offered to sell two key pieces of land in the Santa Monica Mountains to a state parks agency at a bargain price, in an attempt to soften opposition to a controversial land swap so that a road can be built through Cheeseboro Canyon Park, a state official said Wednesday.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area would receive 230 acres of rolling, upland meadow and 75.7 oak-dotted acres bordering the park on the south, said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that administers mountain parkland.

In return, the conservancy would pay Potomac Investment Associates $2 million made available by Proposition 70, a June ballot initiative that provided state funds for park acquisition, Edmiston said. He estimated the market value of the two parcels at about $4 million.

Moreover, Edmiston said, the sale would mean that the conservancy would not complain to Ventura County officials that the park would suffer from a golf course and about 1,500 homes Potomac and the PGA Tour plan to build on nearby Jordan Ranch. Potomac has an option to buy the land from its owner, entertainer Bob Hope.

China Flat Meadow

Potomac has proposed that the National Park Service swap 60 acres of parkland for 800 acres, much of it in the upland meadow known as China Flat. Potomac had planned 17 estate homes on the remaining 230 acres of China Flat now proposed for sale to the conservancy.

Homeowners and conservationists have been opposed to the road Potomac wants to build through the 60 acres of parkland. The road would provide access to the proposed Jordan Ranch development, pending before the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. The conservancy board is to consider a formal proposal to acquire the two tracts of land at a meeting Monday night.

Peter N. Kyros Jr., a Potomac spokesman, refused to discuss the conservancy deal, which Edmiston said was agreed to in principle at a meeting Wednesday with Kyros.

The proposed sale of the two parcels would not affect Potomac’s controversial land trade with the National Park Service. Daniel R. Kuehn, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains national recreation area, who has endorsed the swap, called the proposed conservancy purchase “a wonderful move.”

“I can’t help but feel that people are going to be more favorably disposed” toward the land swap after hearing about the proposed sale, Kuehn said.

Potomac’s latest proposal appeared to win over one of the developer’s leading critics, David M. Brown, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, who had earlier said that noise and traffic from the road would severely damage the park and that the land being received in return was rugged, inaccessible “goat country.”

On Wednesday, Brown called the proposed sale of the two tracts of land to the conservancy outstanding and said it would be adequate compensation for the loss of the 60 acres for the road.

Potomac is in the process of buying 450 acres from Encino developer Jerry Y. Oren--75.7 acres of which would be sold to the conservancy. That addition to the park would provide visitors easy access to a flat area containing a substantial number of oak trees at the mouth of Cheeseboro Canyon.

“Old people, kids can walk through here,” Brown said.

But some skepticism remains about Potomac’s development plans and about the impact of its four-lane access road.

“If you build a road a hundred feet wide and you have traffic on it in a national park, you’re going to affect wildlife,” Old Agoura resident Ron Troncatty said. “As far as you can see from your car, the coyotes are not going to come.”