U.S. Interior Official Tours Sites Proposed for Parkland Swap

A top Interior Department official toured Cheeseboro Canyon and the Jordan Ranch near Agoura Hills Tuesday, his visit reflecting the political sensitivity of a proposed land exchange that would pave the way for a huge private development bordering national parkland.

Lou Gallegos, assistant secretary of the interior for policy, budget and administration, was accompanied by regional and local officials of the National Park Service, who also briefed him on a developer’s proposal to deed the government hundreds of acres of land in return for a smaller wedge of federal land on which the developer would build an access road.

The proposal has come under mounting scrutiny in Washington, where a House subcommittee is looking into federal land exchanges. Gallegos was the second assistant Department of Interior secretary to visit the site. Constance Harriman, assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, toured Cheeseboro and Jordan Ranch in January.

Gallegos, a former New Mexico state official, is a top adviser to Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan, a former congressman from the state, and a department official described him as a “special emissary.”

Gallegos played down the importance of the visit. Wearing a “New Mexico Lobos” jacket and riding shotgun in a National Park Service van, he was noncommittal on the land exchange as he and the rest of his party left the Jordan Ranch.

Stan Albright, western regional director of the Park Service in San Francisco and one of those accompanying Gallegos, said the tour was merely aimed at “getting him familiar with the lay of the land.”

Gallegos described the Jordan Ranch as “a marvelous property,” but said without elaborating: “It’s not necessarily what the property is now; it’s what people would like it to be.”

An environmental impact statement on the exchange is being prepared and Gallegos said that despite high-level interest within the department, no shortcuts will be taken in reviewing the proposal.

Gallegos also said the tour and briefing were only part of his California itinerary, which included talks on offshore drilling and a visit to Channel Islands National Park.

Although the Park Service is officially neutral on the proposed exchange, several officials, including Albright, have spoken in favor of it.

The trade would make it possible for Potomac Investment Associates to develop 1,152 homes and a championship golf course on the 2,408-acre Jordan Ranch, under option from entertainer Bob Hope.

The scenic, oak-dotted ranch occupies Palo Comado Canyon on the western edge of the Cheeseboro Canyon unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Under the Potomac proposal, the company would transfer 864 acres of the Jordan Ranch to the Park Service and sell another 305 acres to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency. In return, the Park Service would deed Potomac 59 acres of the Cheeseboro tract so it could build its road.

Supporters of the exchange, including some state and federal park officials, see it as a good deal for the government, saying it would get hundreds of acres of scenic land it could never afford to buy.

Opponents of the proposal, including local homeowners and the Washington, D.C.-based Wilderness Society, contend that the trade would induce development on such a vast scale that it would degrade the government’s Jordan Ranch holdings and its Cheeseboro tract.

Without the trade, they say, Potomac would have to scale down its project and leave part of Jordan Ranch as open space to comply with environmental rules.

The land exchange was rejected out of hand in 1987 by Dan Kuehn, former superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and by Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Susan Recce.

But William Fairfield, Potomac’s attorney and an ex-law partner of Ronald Reagan’s former Interior Secretary William Clark, went over their heads to Assistant Secretary William P. Horn. Horn told Park Service officials to reconsider, and Potomac subsequently sweetened its offer of land.

In addition to road access, Potomac must secure favorable zoning from Ventura County authorities. Under current open space zoning, which requires a minimum lot size of 160 acres, only 14 homes could be built on the ranch. County officials are considering Potomac’s request for rezoning.

The House subcommittee on environment, energy and natural resources, chaired by Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), is investigating federal land exchanges, including the proposed Cheeseboro-Jordan Ranch trade, and may hold hearings this spring.

Steve Richardson, a member of the subcommittee staff, said the focus is on the lack of formal, written standards to govern such exchanges, rather than on the merits of individual trades.

Meanwhile, Potomac and Wilderness Society officials clashed over the contents of a briefing paper Potomac has circulated describing benefits of the exchange.

Among other things, it notes that in a report earlier this month on priority additions to national parks, a consortium of 20 environmental groups did not identify the Jordan Ranch as a priority acquisition.

The consortium is headed by the Wilderness Society, the group that has opposed the land exchange on grounds the whole Jordan Ranch should be preserved.

Donald J. Hellman, associate counsel for governmental affairs for the Wilderness Society, said it was “ludicrous” for Potomac to suggest that environmentalists didn’t want to preserve the Jordan Ranch. He said the annual report only names properties which have been appraised and for which acquisition costs are known, and that is the only reason Jordan Ranch wasn’t specifically mentioned.

Peter Kyros, general partner of Potomac, said he did not know that was why the parcel was omitted from the consortium’s report. “It seemed to me that if Jordan was high on their list of acquisitions, it should have been on there,” he said.