Pair Envision Planned City Rising in the High Desert : Antelope Valley: Former Lorimar Chaiman Merv Adelson and Irwin Molasky are proposing a 8,500-home community, but the future is cloudy.

A few miles west of Palmdale in the fast-growing Antelope Valley lies Ritter Ranch, a sprawling, 11,500-acre parcel of undeveloped land that is home to cattle, goats and a host of other hearty creatures that thrive in the high desert climes.

But if Merv Adelson--the former chairman of Lorimar Telepictures and husband of TV newswoman Barbara Walters--and his longtime partner, Irwin Molasky, have their way, Ritter Ranch will also be home to the area’s largest residential development. Adelson and Molasky are the general partners in the proposed Ritter Ranch project, a master-planned community that, if all goes well, would contain 8,500 homes and a population of 25,000 when completed in 20 to 30 years.

The project’s manager, Peter Wenner, a senior consultant at the accounting firm KMPG Peat Marwick, said the cost of the development could reach $2 billion, in current dollars. If all goes according to plan, he said, ground would be broken on the first home in 1993.

Ritter Ranch’s future, though, is uncertain. The developers submitted plans to the Palmdale City Council and planning staff last month, and requested that the property be annexed to Palmdale. That would allow the developers to work with one jurisdiction and one set of local ordinances. The property is in an unincorporated area surrounded by several small communities.

Fred Buss, assistant director of planning for Palmdale, said his planning staff might not begin reviewing the Ritter Ranch proposal until mid-1990.

But the Adelson project has already met with opposition from some local homeowners who say they might take legal action against the development.

“What the project is doing is basically changing the rural complexion of this whole valley from country to city,” said Mary Ann Floyd, a rancher and head of a local land-use committee, who opposes the development. “Our position is, you can’t apply city standards to this area.”

There’s enough uncertainty that Adelson and Molasky don’t yet own the land. What they do have is a four-year option on the land that they purchased from Ritter Park Corp. of Woodland Hills, which bought the ranch in the 1950s from the Ritter family. The family homesteaded the land in the early part of the century, and the property has long been used for farming and cattle ranching.

But Wenner maintained that more development is inevitable in the Antelope Valley--an area that includes Palmdale, about 60 miles from downtown Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. The Antelope Valley currently has about 150,000 residents, but thousands more keep moving there, lured largely by average home prices of $130,000. In all of Los Angeles County the average house price is more than $200,000. Indeed, Palmdale, with a population of 46,000, will more than double its population to 98,618 in the next 20 years, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

And the Antelope Valley has plenty of land, enough to swallow three San Fernando Valleys. “Where else are you going to find 11,500 acres of contiguous land?” Wenner said.

“The Antelope Valley will eventually hold between 750,000 and 1 million people,” Wenner said. He noted that local communities, which have long been dependent on the aerospace industry, have been trying to attract other types of businesses such as high-tech and light manufacturing companies to the area. Also, plans are under way for expansion of the regional airport.

Wenner said about 7,000 homes a year are being built in the Antelope Valley, and several builders, such as Los Angeles-based Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., have projects under way. Another large development is being built by the Rancho Vista Development Co.

But Ritter Ranch would be the area’s largest development by far. Wenner said Ritter Ranch would essentially be a small city, and Adelson and Molasky consider the development a long-term investment.

“If Ritter Ranch goes, it’s going to make this a huge, burgeoning area,” said Frank Haberkorn, president of the Antelope Valley Board of Realtors.

The first stage of development would involve building roads, sewers and parks. Once the infrastructure is in place, building would start on apartments, condos, townhouses and single-family homes ranging from $150,000 to $550,000, in current dollars.

It would also contain a small amount of commercial development, a golf course, schools and an equestrian center. Many of the homes would be built in the hills that run through the ranch, which are dotted with Joshua trees and scrub oaks, while the more mountainous areas--the highest elevation in the ranch is 5,200 feet--would be left untouched.

A spokesman for Adelson and Molasky said the idea for the development began last spring when a broker who had heard of the property approached Adelson and Molasky with the idea that the land would be suitable for a large residential development. Adelson and Molasky hired KMPG Peat Marwick’s real estate division to study the feasibility of the project and the accounting firm recommended going ahead. Adelson and Molasky then bought the option on the Ritter Ranch.

Adelson, 59, a director of the media and entertainment concern Time Warner, is best known for his entertainment ventures. But he and Molasky, 62, a Las Vegas developer and former Lorimar vice president, are longtime partners in real estate. They met in the early 1950s in Las Vegas when Adelson was a grocer and Molasky was a building contractor. Soon after, the pair began building homes together.

The most famous development Adelson and Molasky have built is the upscale Rancho La Costa planned community and resort near San Diego, which they sold to a Japanese concern in 1987. Wenner said Adelson and Molasky envision Ritter Ranch as “another La Costa.”

But the developers probably wouldn’t care to relive the controversy that enveloped La Costa for many years. A 1975 Penthouse magazine article attempted to link the resort and its owners to organized crime, calling La Costa a meeting place for gangsters. The resort’s owners, Adelson, Molasky, Morris B. Dalitz and Allard Roen, sued the magazine for libel.

The decade-long suit was eventually settled out of court, and both sides publicly apologized to the other. Penthouse, among other things, said that it never meant to suggest Adelson and Molasky were members of organized crime.

Wenner said he expects “no controversies” over the Ritter Ranch project because of the negative publicity over La Costa.

But the partners do face opposition from some Antelope Valley residents. When Wenner spoke to locals at a meeting held last month to discuss the project, he had a chilly reception, said Gloria Gossard, a local horsewoman and free-lance writer. “Peter Wenner thought that he would charm the whole plan over,” she said. “But he was hooted down in many instances.”

Rancher Floyd said many longtime residents believe the project is too citified for the rugged Antelope Valley. Ritter Ranch would create bottlenecks of traffic on rural mountain roads, she said, and would bring air and water pollution and increased crime to the area.

“We know development will come to Antelope Valley,” Floyd said. “What we’re asking for is planned development so that it’s compatible with what’s already out here.”

Floyd is worried that Palmdale will readily grant annexation to Ritter Ranch because the city has no property tax, and derives much of its revenues from developer fees. But she said she’s prepared to fight: Floyd and other homeowners are planning to consult attorneys “to advise us as to which course of action to take.”

Philip Wood, who works at the nearby Edwards Air Force Base and is involved in local efforts to manage the region’s scarce water supply, said he’s also willing to take legal action against Ritter Ranch. “We have some real concerns over water,” Wood said. “It’s going to create an uprising when the water is transported out of our area to developments like Ritter Ranch when we don’t have enough water for the development that we have now.”

“In any large development, you’ll always have some opposition,” said Wenner. But he argued that concerns over such issues as water and traffic are being addressed. For example, he said, he is working with other local developers to create a master water system for the area that would include using more reclaimed water.

Wenner said provisions are being made for coping with increased traffic by widening highways and adding off-ramps from Highway 14--the main route into the area--and a mass transit system is being studied. He added that about 65% of Ritter Ranch would remain undeveloped, and would be open to the public for hiking and horseback riding.

The developers are planning to finance the cost of the infrastructure through a so-called “Mello-Roos” district. Mello-Roos, named after legislators Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) and Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles), who sponsored the legislation, allows developers to commit homeowners in advance to higher property taxes than Proposition 13 would otherwise allow. In a typical Mello-Roos district, a local government works with a developer to float a bond issue before the project is built.

Wenner conceded that Ritter Park must still overcome several obstacles, including filing an environmental impact report, before construction begins. And, he said, the current plan might have to change. “We’ve just completed the first step,” he said.