Picking Sides : Developers, Homeowners Differ Over Freeway Bypass Routes

Homeowners and developers in Calabasas are choosing up sides over where a Ventura Freeway emergency bypass road should be built at the rugged Calabasas Grade.

The north side of the freeway is preferred by residents of exclusive Calabasas Park. But the south side is the choice of a company planning a 1,500-home subdivision in Calabasas Park that will pay for the multimillion-dollar link.

The two-mile-wide grade is the last area between Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks without an alternative route that motorists can use in case of a freeway tie-up.

Until now, steep hills at the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley have thwarted development that would be accompanied by road construction.

New interest in a bypass has been sparked by a chain-reaction crash in the middle of the grade that closed the westbound freeway for five hours, however.

Twenty-four vehicles tangled in February when a tractor-trailer jackknifed and dumped 85 gallons of diesel fuel from its ruptured tanks. Traffic backed up to the junction of the San Diego and Ventura freeways in Sherman Oaks while highway workers cleaned up the spill.

Land on the south side of the freeway is owned by the Irvine-based Baldwin Co., which closed escrow March 31 on Calabasas Park’s last major undeveloped area--a 1,300-acre parcel.

Frontage Road Backed

In a newsletter sent last month to Calabasas Park residents, Baldwin Co. planners urged that a partially built freeway frontage street, Calabasas Road, be extended about a mile and turned into the grade’s bypass.

Baldwin Vice President Bob Burns explained in the newsletter that his firm and “many of the residents of Calabasas” prefer to see Calabasas Road connected to Las Virgenes Road west of the grade.

That alternative is better than a longstanding Los Angeles County plan to extend Parkway Calabasas to Las Virgenes, he said.

Company planners said they are opposed to making Parkway Calabasas the bypass because it would funnel traffic through the heart of Calabasas Park’s residential area.

“We agree that better planning” can lead to “less inconvenience to those living here,” Burns said. He said Baldwin officials are continuing to discuss the other route with homeowner representatives.

But the influential Calabasas Park Homeowners Assn. is protesting the company’s road proposal.

In a letter circulated last week to the community, association President Myra Turek complained that the firm is using the bypass issue as a way to gather support for a larger subdivision project.

Turek said homeowners want Baldwin to pay for construction of a bypass road that would be about a mile north of the freeway.

Victory Route Urged

The preferred route, she said, would be a western extension of Victory Boulevard through the southeastern corner of Ventura County to the northern dead end of Las Virgenes Road.

Such a route would follow east Las Virgenes Canyon through the rugged hills. It would skirt the city of Hidden Hills, which has spurned suggestions that an east-west road be constructed through its limits.

Turek said it would be foolish to construct an emergency bypass such as Calabasas Road that is adjacent to the freeway.

“It would be unusable in case of a toxic spill like they had over in Simi Valley recently,” she said Thursday. “The Victory Boulevard extension would make sense.”

Residents’ Response

According to Turek, more than 600 Calabasas Park residents have returned post cards to the association in the past few days expressing agreement. The cards will be used in road discussions with Baldwin officials and with Los Angeles County planners.

County officials--whose master plan still calls for the eventual westward extension of Parkway Calabasas south of the freeway--said it is unclear whether Baldwin can be forced to pay for construction of a road that is a mile away from its property and in a different county.

“I can’t imagine how we could require an improvement that far off-site,” said Leeta Pistone, field deputy for County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. “It would be hard to justify.

“We know we need an alternate route either north or south of the freeway, preferably both places. But it almost has to be on the south side. How do you cut through the mountains on the north when Hidden Hills won’t let the road come through it?”

Pistone said the county cannot build a bypass road by itself.

So the sooner the dispute is settled, the better, she said. Another grade-choking crash will leave motorists begging for relief, she said.