Thousand Oaks Acts to Protect Equestrian Center

In an effort to preserve one of the last equestrian centers remaining in the Thousand Oaks area, the City Council on Tuesday told a developer to find a new way to widen the access road to his project.

David H. Murdock, developer of the 1,900-acre Sherwood Country Club luxury housing community, needs to rebuild and widen Potrero Road, an access route to the project.

He had asked the city to let him put a drainage ditch through a corner of the Foxfield Riding School.

But more than 200 people, lamenting the gradual disappearance of places to ride around Thousand Oaks, appeared in support of the equestrian center.

“Every place that was a riding academy is now a shopping center,” said Mike Higgins, a 25-year Newbury Park resident, before the meeting. “Everything is getting squeezed out and stuccoed over.”

Dennis Cohen told the council that the equestrian center “is not a club for the few idle rich. This is a place for people. Keep it for them. Let them have it.”

In exchange for county approval of the Sherwood development--where homes reportedly will cost from $1 million to $2 million--Murdock agreed a few years ago to widen Potrero from two to four lanes, said John Clement, public works director in Thousand Oaks.

But to do the widening, engineers must deal with two drainage channels that run beneath the road, he said.

Murdock planned to build a bridge over one of the channels and wanted to divert the other channel through Foxfield property, Clement said.

If the plan had been approved, the city would have had to acquire the property through eminent domain, Clement said, with the developer footing the bill.

Foxfield manager Bill Postel wanted Murdock to build a bridge over both channels--a more expensive proposition but one that would not disrupt as much Foxfield land, he said.

After the council’s unanimous vote in support of the center, the president of Murdock Residential Development, Donald Trotter, said the company would work toward an agreement with Postel.

The Murdock plan would have cut off the corner of one of two 2,000-square-foot lighted arenas, disrupted a half-mile exercise track and encroached on other training areas, Postel said.

The 35-acre riding school has little room for expansion, Postel said.

The rural area sits in a canyon bordered by land owned by the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency.

The center, which is open every day but Christmas from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., is used by about 1,000 people a week, said Jo Ann Postel, who started the school with her husband in 1966.

About 90 horses are boarded there.

The Postels keep another 90 horses for English-style riding lessons and instruction in hunter and jumper riding, Bill Postel said.

The school, which offers a summer camp for 210 children between 12 and 15, is well-known nationwide, the couple said.

Olympic competitors Hilda Gurney and Mark Watring took lessons as children at Foxfield.

Watring now works as a trainer there, Jo Ann Postel said.

The West Coast screening trials for the Olympic equestrian jumping team were held at Foxfield for five years. And the 16-member Foxfield Equestrian Drill Team, which rides without bridles or saddles, has performed twice at Madison Square Garden, she said.

The wooded area also was the setting of the movie “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” with Errol Flynn, and several John Wayne Westerns, Jo Ann Postel said.