County Puts an Asterisk Next to Open-Space Label

Depending on the point of view, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors made sure Thursday that a piece of hilly land in Calabasas will be open space or an open question.

The Liberty Canyon Homeowners Assn. and three Agoura Hills city officials asked supervisors to restrict a 218-acre parcel in the Las Virgenes Valley for use as open space only.

Instead, the board assured them that the land can--and probably will--be kept as open space, but by a 4-0 vote gave developer Tom Riach the right to make future proposals to build on the property.

Riach said he has no immediate plans for a project on the land, but the homeowner activists weren’t so sure.

“We can’t prove there’s a housing tract behind the curtain, but we can’t prove there isn’t,” said David Brown, vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation.

County officials downplayed the decision, saying it merely allowed Riach the flexibility to make minor design changes in a housing tract that he is building next to the open space.

The board’s assurance that the land will be protected came in the form of a promise by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the area, to oppose any future development proposal that would cause a significant reduction in the open space.

But the homeowners and Agoura Hills City Council members Jack W. Koenig, Vicky Leary and Fran Pavley maintained that the county was leaving the door open for future development on property that the community believed would always be left untouched.

“We don’t want any ifs, ands or buts,” Koenig said.

Riach obtained approval Thursday for 34 homes on property next to the disputed open-space land.

The project is the final part of a huge development of more than 1,000 condominiums and 1 million square feet of commercial space approved by the county in 1982.

The National Park Service was prepared to buy the land in 1981 but had to back out when the Reagan Administration froze funds that Congress had appropriated.

Antonovich refused the homeowners’ request Thursday that Riach be required to donate the open space to the Park Service or the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency.

He suggested that the parks agencies might sell the land.

”. . . the public is better served if the development rights to these parcels are retained by the county, in lieu of being dedicated to some outside agency that could legally sell off the property,” Antonovich said.

But the superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area reacted to Antonovich’s comment with surprise.

“This is kind of out of the clear blue sky,” David E. Gackenbach said.

He suggested that Antonovich was creating a “smoke screen” to rationalize granting a developer’s wishes.

If the county is really worried about park agencies selling the land, it could attach a routine deed restriction that would forever bar such a sale, he noted.

Antonovich aide Dave Vannatta said later that he could provide no example of either parks agency selling off land to developers.

But he said Antonovich’s comment was not meant as a criticism of the parks agencies.

“The county is the one that is requiring the open space, so the county ought to be the one to be sure it stays open space,” he said.