Monrovia Approves Land Swap

The City Council decided Tuesday to negotiate with a national land conservation organization that wants to buy 1,200 hillside acres for $648,000.

The nonprofit Trust for Public Lands, based in San Francisco, will pass on the land to the Angeles National Forest in return for parcels that are less desirable as forest land or more appropriate for development, said trust spokesman Tom Armstrong.

Last year the trust completed a similar land swap, involving 634 acres, with Monrovia. That land is now within the Angeles National Forest, which in return gave the trust 150 acres in the Lake Hughes area. The trust later sold the Lake Hughes parcels to the county Sanitation Districts for a sewage treatment plant, Armstrong said.

The trust, which has put 460,000 acres of land into public ownership since its creation in 1973, has started discussions with Pasadena and Sierra Madre to buy some of their land.