Drawing the Line in Old Calabasas

A campaign to preserve the spot where the first European ate a meal in Calabasas is being waged from an appropriate place: a kitchen table.

That is where Calabasas Park homemaker Marcia Ronka is coordinating her crusade to get the state to declare Old Town Calabasas an official “Point of Historical Interest.”

Such a designation would help keep bulldozers away from a block-long collection of ragtag storefronts on Calabasas Road that for 60 years have clustered around Calabasas’ landmark hangman’s tree and its 145-year-old Leonis Adobe.

Since the first of the year, Ronka has been researching the history of the one-time El Camino Real stagecoach stop and meticulously typing out letters to government officials and local organizations asking their support.

Backing Has Grown

One by one, endorsements have filtered in. On Friday, she received the most important one yet: the backing of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the unincorporated Calabasas area.

That means that Ronka’s application probably will be signed soon by Ed Edelman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, clearing the last major hurdle before the request can be considered by the state’s Historical Resources Commission.

“I’m thrilled! I’m ecstatic!” Ronka said. “This is a very important for Calabasas.”

The historic designation Ronka is seeking would offer protection to the half a dozen original 1920s-era buildings in what remains of the original village of Calabasas.

Developers building within a state Point of Historical Interest can be required to submit plans for public scrutiny and environmental review. The designation also gives local building inspectors flexibility in requiring that changes to property reflect the historical flavor of the site.

Most of Old Town Calabasas’ surviving wood-frame structures have been repeatedly remodeled over the years. Some have been modernized extensively on the inside to hide their age.

But most of the buildings retain an Old West look on their exteriors. Several new shops that have replaced old shacks at the southwestern end of the village are designed to somewhat resemble the graceful Leonis Adobe across the street.

New development is closing in on all four sides of the row of storefronts, however. The newly widened Ventura Freeway is crowding Old Town on the north, condominiums are rising above it on the south, a new hospital is under construction on the east and glitzy new office buildings are being built on the west.

Last week, a developer hoping to demolish a 1910 barn that has been converted into a group of small shops near the middle of the block asked shopkeepers to sign waivers to their leases, said Glenn Hamanaka, one of the building’s tenants.

“They want to put a three-story building in here,” said Hamanaka, owner of Tadashi’s hair salon. “I didn’t sign. I have another 8 1/2 years on my lease, and I like my shop where it is. There’s a lot of history here.”

Quake Toppled Barn

According to Hamanaka, his old building has struggled back from floods and earthquakes, including one 1930s temblor that caused the barn to fall over.

Hamanaka’s salon sits next to Calabasas Creek, a heavily overgrown, year-round stream that is shaded by 100-year-old eucalyptus trees. It is one of the area’s last creeks to escape being channelized in concrete.

Manny Yure, 86, of Woodland Hills, who is a volunteer worker in a thrift shop next to Hamanaka’s salon, says he remembers visiting Calabasas in 1915. He said the area has changed considerably since then, but he favors saving what is left of the original village.

“There’s nothing wrong with preserving the past,” Yure said.

Ronka, married to former Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Ronka, has lived a mile away from Old Town Calabasas for about a year and a half. She said she hit upon the idea of seeking historical preservation for the block after becoming alarmed over a $150-million hotel and office development planned by the Ahmanson Commercial Development Co. a few hundred yards west of the Old Town area.

“Development was encroaching on all sides,” she said. “I want my 3-year old son, Eric, to see the flavor of whatever Old West is left around here.”

Fears More Offices

Ronka said she fears that developers will see the five-story Ahmanson buildings being constructed and get ideas about redeveloping the Old Town area.

“Everyone else who has been content with one-story buildings will say ‘to hell with the past. Why shouldn’t I sell out and have five or six-story enclosed glass boxes too?’ ”

To prepare her application, Ronka researched the history of Calabasas in libraries and consulted with historians.

Mona Neels, chairman of the architectural committee of the Calabasas Historical Society, contributed an extensive report on the remaining original structures on the block, tracing each through generations of different uses.

The most striking building, which most recently housed a yogurt shop, started as a homesteader’s residence and later served as an inn for hunters and travelers. For 50 years after that, until 1968, it was a small grocery called Kramer’s Store, according to Neels.

History Studied

David M. Brown, professor of history at Valley College and a Calabasas environmental activist, researched Calabasas’ history back to Jan. 15, 1770, for Ronka.

That’s the day, according to Brown, when the Portola expedition stopped off around noon for lunch next to Calabasas Creek. The area previously had been visited only by Indians.

Expedition members were returning from Monterey, where they had traveled after discovering the San Fernando Valley in August, 1769, Brown said. Written accounts of the trip say that expedition members were exhausted from their trek and anxious to return to San Diego; Calabasas was on the route of a shortcut back to the Valley that Indians in Ventura had recommended.

Antonovich’s memo of support for the historic designation will be sent to Edelman on Tuesday, said Leeta Pistone, Antonovich’s deputy for the Valley. “Mike thinks it will help preserve the ambience of Old Calabasas,” Pistone said.

Last year, she said, as a way of saving its Western look, Antonovich ordered public works officials to drop long-range plans to widen Calabasas Road and construct sidewalks through the Old Town area.

Concurrence Likely

Edelman probably will sign Ronka’s application quickly, said Bob Ballinger, a spokesman for the board’s chairman. “There would have to be a pretty compelling reason for Ed to say no if Mike said yes to something in Mike’s district,” Ballinger said.

Bob Ronka, an attorney who represented the northeast Valley on the City Council from 1977 to 1981, said he was skeptical at first of his wife’s chance of success. He said she had never been involved in a similar political activity.

“I know how slow the process is,” he explained. “But sometimes innocence is best. When you haven’t been in the process, you don’t feel something can’t be done. She just dug in and came up with this idea. She took it to homeowners and other groups and never stopped.”

The influential Calabasas Park Homeowners Assn. added its support late last month. Group president Myra Turek said the block’s “rustic, wood-framed structures are in the style and tradition of the ‘Last of the Old West,’ ” which for years has been Calabasas’ slogan.

Richard G. Tarlow, president of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, offered his group’s endorsement by explaining that “Old Town is an oasis amid the booming megalopolis which Los Angeles County is rapidly becoming.”

The Calabasas Historical Society’s 200 members voted their support for saving the village shops “before the developers wipe them all out,” as society president Nancy Lauridsen put it last week.

Ronka said she will rush the signed application to Sacramento as soon as Edelman’s office sends it back to her.

“Time is important,” she explained. “Why should everything look like Ventura Boulevard?”