Panel Cool Toward Plan to Make Canyon a Monument

Nature lovers seeking to protect Studio City’s Fryman Canyon from construction got a cool reception Monday from a Los Angeles City Council panel presided over by two inner-city lawmakers who repeatedly expressed puzzlement over how an undeveloped canyon could qualify as a city cultural-historic monument.

By a 2-0 vote, the Arts, Health and Humanities Committee referred the monument proposal--backed by environmentalists and many local lawmakers, including Mayor Tom Bradley--to the full council with no recommendation. At one point, Councilman Richard Alatorre rolled his eyes as environmentalists argued that a grove of walnut trees on the property made it unique.

Meanwhile, in a new twist in their battle to block developer Fred Sahadi from building on the lush canyon site, officials of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy said they are considering suing Sahadi and the city of Los Angeles to gain title to 31 of Sahadi’s 63 acres of Fryman Canyon property.

Monday’s vote was the latest episode in the Fryman Canyon controversy, which pits Sahadi, who wants to build 26 estate-sized homes in the canyon, against environmentalists and neighbors who oppose the project.

On May 17, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission recommended that the City Council bestow monument status on 31 acres of the canyon, but the victory was moot. The acreage designated was the same land that the council had already directed the developer in September, 1982, to donate to the conservancy as a condition for approving the project.

Councilwoman Gloria Molina--acting as chairwoman of the committee in the absence of Councilman Joel Wachs--strongly warned the supporters of monument status that she feared they were trying to misuse the city’s cultural heritage law to stop a development project.

Both Molina and Alatorre, who represent east side and inner-city constituencies, said they found the logic of declaring all or parts of the canyon a cultural-historic monument hard to fathom.

When Cultural Heritage Commission architect Jay Oren said early cowboy movies with Lillian Gish, an important bit of Los Angeles history, were shot on the property, Molina reacted with apparent exasperation. She asked whether Gish had not made movies on other properties in Los Angeles and if that meant they too should be declared monuments.

Molina finally advised the preservationists that their strongest argument was that the canyon had one of the state’s few remaining walnut groves. But she also complained that the environmentalists had offered scant evidence to support that assertion.

Meanwhile, Jane Blumenfeld, Bradley’s top planning deputy, said a mistake allowed Sahadi to get a key city zoning clearance for the development several years ago without formally bequeathing part of the land to the conservancy, as the council had ordered earlier.

Only recently was it discovered that although Sahadi offered the 31-acre plot to the conservancy and the agency accepted it, the land was never formally deeded over, she said. “It’s very weird.”

Judy Marx, who is among the environmentalists seeking to prevent development of the canyon, accused Sahadi of trying to defraud the city by not transferring title.

But Benjamin M. Reznik, the developer’s attorney, said his client is unwilling to grant full title to the conservancy until he is assured that his project can be built on the remaining 32 acres. He said Sahadi was within his rights to proceed with the permit process in the meantime.

Blumenfeld and Clark King, the conservancy’s deputy director, said they believe that the council’s 1982 approval of a tract map for the project required that title be transferred before the project’s tract map was recorded, which took place in 1986.

“It’s conceivable we could sue,” King said. “The question before our attorneys is, ‘How do we enforce this condition and who do we sue to get it enforced?’ ”

Obtaining title to the property could strengthen the conservancy’s hand as it and its environmentalist allies try to block the project altogether and force Sahadi to sell his entire parcel to the conservancy for a lower price than he is asking.