Wilderness Society Blasts Plan to Swap Parkland : Development: The national group urges the Park Service not to trade part of Cheeseboro Canyon to the developers of Jordan Ranch. Local park officials say the society doesn’t recognize a good deal.

A controversial land swap proposal involving federal parkland in Cheeseboro Canyon has come under strong attack from the Wilderness Society, an influential conservation group that has told the National Park Service it will fight any attempt to go through with the exchange.

In a letter to Park Service officials, the group said it would be improper for them to trade the land to developers, who would use it to build a four-lane road to serve a proposed championship golf course and 1,152 homes on the adjacent Jordan Ranch in eastern Ventura County.

A road through the scenic, oak-dotted canyon would damage it and trigger development on the Jordan Ranch that would further degrade the canyon, the Wilderness Society said. The Park Service should reject the exchange because no “other position would be defensible given your obligations under the law,” according to the letter, which was dated Dec. 19 but not made public until The Times obtained a copy.

Because of intense development pressures, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area “is under constant threat by actions taken every day over which the Park Service has no control,” the letter said. “Yet, in this instance, the Park Service has control, and we urge you to utilize that control to protect” the recreation area.

Donald J. Hellmann, associate counsel for governmental affairs with the Wilderness Society and one of two society officials who signed the letter, declined to say what action will be taken if the land swap is approved.

The land exchange, which would add 864 acres of the Jordan Ranch to the recreation area in return for the 60-acre road site, has many local critics.

But the involvement of the Wilderness Society, a Washington-based group with about 350,000 members nationwide, is likely to jump-start opposition to the trade, which has been widely viewed as inevitable because of the developers’ political connections and tentative support from the Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

“We’re thrilled,” said Siegfried Othmer of the Save the Mountain Park Coalition. The involvement of the Wilderness Society “has galvanized . . . our side,” he said.

Peter Kyros, general partner of Potomac Investment Associates, one of the Jordan Ranch developers, said he was “not surprised, but disappointed” by the society’s position.

“This is an extraordinarily good deal for the public,” he said. “I wish we had their support.”

The Wilderness Society letter was addressed to Stan Albright, western regional director of the Park Service, with copies to Park Service Director James Ridenour and Dave Gackenbach, superintendent of the national recreation area.

Gackenbach said Monday it appeared that the Wilderness Society’s decision to fight the exchange was made “in a vacuum. . . . They should have come in to talk to us and see where we’re at.”

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Constance Harriman--who oversees the National Park Service--on Jan. 15 toured Jordan Ranch and Cheeseboro Canyon with Gackenbach, Potomac officials and Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Gackenbach and Edmiston said Harriman did not say where she stands on the land swap. Efforts to reach her Friday and Monday were unsuccessful.

The Park Service is supervising preparation of an environmental impact statement on the land swap proposal. It is expected to be circulated soon for public comment. Ventura County officials, who would have to significantly rezone the Jordan Ranch for the project to go forward, are preparing a separate environmental impact report.

Created by Congress in 1978, the national recreation area is a patchwork of parks, trails and private holdings extending 50 miles from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

The 2,407-acre Jordan Ranch, which includes unspoiled Palo Comado Canyon and an area of panoramic views known as China Flat, is owned by entertainer Bob Hope. It is one of several Hope properties the Park Service wanted to acquire for the national recreation area. Instead, Hope optioned the tract to Potomac and PGA Tour for development of the golf course and luxury homes.

But the key to Jordan Ranch is Cheeseboro Canyon, the only place where a four-lane road could be built to serve the big development.

The 2,100-acre canyon, surrounded by planned major developments, was acquired several years ago by the government at great cost in money and embarrassment.

The most expensive part of the lower canyon was bought in 1985 from real estate developer Jerry Oren for a record $8 million. Oren was later convicted of fraud for inflating the price of the land by falsifying a purported rival offer.

Long after the Park Service bought the land, it was also disclosed that Los Angeles County has an easement to extend Thousand Oaks Boulevard through the heart of the canyon.

In 1987, the Jordan Ranch developers first proposed acquiring the southwestern corner of Cheeseboro Canyon to connect their project with the Ventura Freeway.

They were initially rebuffed by Dan Kuehn, former superintendent of the recreation area, and by Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Susan Recce.

But PGA attorney William Fairfield went over their heads, apparently at the suggestion of Fairfield’s one-time law partner and former Reagan Interior Secretary William Clark. In an April, 1987, letter in which he mentioned Clark’s name three times, Fairfield urged William P. Horn, then the assistant interior secretary in charge of the National Park Service, to reconsider.

Horn told Park Service officials to give the idea another hearing. In 1988, after the proposal was sweetened to include large donations of land, Kuehn and regional director Albright announced they favored the concept.

Under the current proposal, the Park Service would get 864 acres of the Jordan Ranch in return for the 60-acre swath of Cheeseboro. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that helps acquire land for the recreation area, would get 305 more acres for $2 million, including part of scenic China Flat at the northern end of the ranch. Of the 2,407-acre Jordan Ranch property, more than 40% would wind up in public ownership.

Critics contend that the trade would despoil existing lands that cost the government dearly and would intensify pressure on Ventura County officials to rezone Jordan Ranch, allowing the massive development to go forward and further degrading the park.

They also have questioned whether a trade for 864 acres is truly a windfall, arguing that zoning approval for the development probably would not be granted unless the developer donated significant gifts of open space.

They also contend that public acquisition of Jordan Ranch may still be possible if the land swap and rezoning are rejected.

Othmer claimed that the Park Service and Conservancy have come off looking “like another special interest.” He said their position seems to be: “No matter what the scale of the proposed development, it’s OK with us because we’ve got ours.”

For the agencies to sign off on the deal is appalling, said Hellman of the Wilderness Society, “because we think we can win this thing, and you don’t deal when you can win.”

“I’m trying to figure out what they’re talking about,” retorted Gackenbach. “What are we going to win?”

If the exchange is not made and the road is not built, and low-density estates are built on the ranchland instead, there would be no assurance of any public access to Jordan Ranch, Gackenbach said.

“I think the public agencies are in this for what we can get for the public domain . . . and that’s everybody within the United States,” Gackenbach said.

The Wilderness Society sounds like “a general 50 miles back from the front,” Edmiston said.

“My sympathies are 100% with them,” but their position “is absolutely unrealistic, and I have to look at it from the standpoint of the trenches,” he said.

As for some day acquiring the whole tract, Edmiston said, he is “open to listening to all this, but I don’t know how you get Bob Hope’s assent unless you come bringing money.”