$11 Million Allotted for Mountain Parkland

The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate agreed Tuesday on an $11-million allocation for buying parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains in 1989.

The amount is the largest granted in five years to the stalled effort to build a network of public open space from Griffith Park to Point Mugu.

Park officials say they plan to use $3 million to repay a debt to the state, preventing a sell-off of 786 acres in a pristine Malibu area canyon. They also hope to buy the Agoura site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, bulldozed last week by a developer who wants to build 160 homes there.

When the National Park Service staff headquartered in Woodland Hills heard news of the allocation by telephone, “everybody got all excited, really excited,” said Bill Webb, assistant superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “That’s quite a bit for us. We’ve suffered quite a while.”

Key properties, including the proposed park entrance, have been lost to private developers in the past as land values soared while allocations shrank.

This year’s appropriation represents more than 25% of the about $40 million budgeted for buying federal parkland across the country.

The turnabout came, “I would guess, to help make up for last year,” when the Santa Monica Mountains received only $1 million, much less than anticipated, said Melissa Kuckro, an aide to park supporter Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles).

The park’s 1988 allocation was slashed at the last minute by the chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Committee, Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.).

Yates also harshly criticized the National Park Service on behalf of a Santa Monica Mountains landowner, George Murphy Dunne Jr., who is the son of a powerful Chicago politician. Yates placed new restrictions on the Park Service’s authority to condemn land, including Dunne’s, in the Santa Monicas. Yates acknowledged at the time that he wanted to help his friend’s son, but said the budget reduction was unrelated.

Political Action

In response, environmental groups formed a coalition, Save the Mountain Park, which organized a letter-writing campaign and sent lobbyists to Washington.

Jo Kitz, the coalition’s chairman, said she takes the allocation as a signal that the park construction will go forward in coming years.

The coalition had worried that the Park Service might actually start losing property it had already acquired. A deadline to repay the state for a chunk of Lower Zuma Canyon was fast approaching, and if the deadline passed the land was to go on the market.

Webb said the new infusion of cash means the loan will be paid off in time.

Purchase of the Renaissance Faire site might be less likely. The owner has said his land is worth $14 million and that he is not willing to sell to the Park Service.