Sierra Club Panel OKs Proposed Land Swap : Parkland: The committee agrees to the exchange involving Bob Hope and a state acquisition agency if 16 conditions are met.

After a lengthy and heated debate Saturday, a Sierra Club committee voted to conditionally endorse a land exchange proposed by comedian Bob Hope that would allow a developer to build a road through a 59-acre strip of federal parkland in Cheeseboro Canyon.

If the proposal is approved by the National Park Service, Hope has agreed to sell 5,700 acres he owns in the Santa Susana and Santa Monica mountains to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for a below-market $20 million. The conservancy was established by the state to acquire parks and trails in the Santa Monica Mountains and neighboring hills and mountains.

Potomac Investment Associates, which has optioned the land from Hope, wants to build a golf course and 750 luxury residential units on 1,100 acres of the Jordan Ranch property owned by Hope in eastern Ventura County. But the firm needs 59 acres owned by the National Park Service for an access road to the landlocked tract, which is next to Cheeseboro Canyon.

“I know it bothers some of you and your conscience, but saving land is our business, and look at the amount of land we’d be saving,” Dave Brown, a committee member and a major proponent of the swap, said.

But others bitterly complained that the swap would set a dangerous precedent by endorsing the handing over of open space to developers. They urged the committee not to endorse the land deal until an environmental impact statement is completed.

“I am absolutely astounded at what’s going on here today,” Jill Swift, a longtime Sierra Club leader, said. “I’m shocked and disappointed.”

Conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston, who urged the committee to endorse the land swap, said the club’s support would be important in Washington, D.C.

The Wilderness Society, another major environmental group, is lobbying against the swap on Capitol Hill. A top Wilderness Society official has called it “absolutely outrageous” that the land exchange is contingent upon relinquishing federal public land.

The committee, in an 18-4 vote, agreed Saturday to approve the swap if 16 conditions are met. Among the requirements are that any road built through the oak-dotted Cheeseboro Canyon area not exceed two lanes and a stipulation that roads be tunneled through all ridges more than 1,200 feet high.

The club also wants Potomac Investment Associates to donate more property to the National Park Service. The developer had initially offered to give the Park Service 864 acres in exchange for the 59-acre access road site. The club also wants the developer to agree to build no residential units on major ridgelines or in oak woodlands.

Saturday’s endorsement was made by the club’s Southern California Regional Conservation Committee. The recommendation will be sent to the Sierra Club’s state Board of Directors.

The committee, other members of the club and representatives of other environmental groups debated the issue for more than two hours. Many had patiently waited five hours for the agenda item to be heard. Fifty people crowded into the meeting room at the Towsley Canyon Park in the Santa Clarita Valley. The committee’s chairman urged audience members to calm down when tempers flared.

Sigfried Othmar, an opponent of the endorsement, lamented that the issue had divided the group.

“The proposed land swap has the effect, if not the intent, of fragmenting the environmental community into opposing camps, making objectivity the first victim,” Othmar said.

On Friday, the chairman of a key House subcommittee agreed to postpone a decision on whether to block the land swap at the request of Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Los Angeles). Beilenson, the leading congressional advocate of preserving significant portions of the Santa Monica Mountains as parkland, said he wants to see environmental impact statements being prepared by the Park Service and Ventura County before taking a stand on the proposal.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) last month became the first elected official to oppose the land swap. Rep. Elton Gallegy (R-Simi Valley), who represents the Cheeseboro Canyon and Jordan Ranch areas, has not taken a stand on the proposal.