High-Tech Face-Off at Fryman Canyon : Development: Environmentalists packing cellular phones head off the earth movers. City order prevents construction trailer from entering area.

Daryce Richman-Cooper’s Mercedes-Benz 380 SEC, personalized license plate, “I SING D,” was the unlikely battlewagon Monday in an inconclusive but very modern test of wills between environmentalists and the would-be developer of woodsy Fryman Canyon in Studio City.

In a scene that might have been scripted by Woody Allen at his ironic best, Richman-Cooper parked her cream-colored Mercedes to block the entrance to the scenic canyon, then sat punching numbers into her car phone to try to get some action from City Hall.

“Whose car is this? We’ve got to get in here,” harrumphed John Bergsma, a burly, cigar-chomping contractor, when he arrived in his pickup truck at 7:30 a.m. to begin preparing the site for construction.

But Richman-Cooper, an actress and studio backup singer whose battle gear was a hot-pink jumpsuit and matching running shoes, refused to budge until city officials arrived and ordered Bergsma not to begin work. It was the latest skirmish between a thin green line of Hollywood environmentalists and Bergsma’s boss, developer Fred Sahadi, who proposes to build a 26-home project on a 63-acre site in the canyon.

Since March, the city has been maneuvering to secure the canyon as parkland and to declare the site a cultural heritage monument. But after the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s offer to buy the land for $8.7 million was rejected as too low last month by Sahadi, the stage was set for a confrontation.

In circuitous fashion, environmentalists had learned that the developer might send in workers Monday. Police had met with Sahadi on Friday, when he alerted them that environmentalists might try to interfere with his workers. Police tipped off Councilman Michael Woo’s office, which tipped off the preservationists.

With the situation stalemated Monday morning, the adversaries--in true late-20th Century L.A.-style--retreated to their mobile phones to summon allies, lawyers, City Hall aides and police to come to their assistance.

Between hurried phone calls, Bergsma and the environmentalists filmed and photographed each other and exchanged hot words.

“You’re destroying a canyon that can’t be replaced, trees that are precious,” said an environmentalist.

“Don’t you live in a house? And what do you think your house is made of? Trees,” replied Bergsma.

At times it got ugly:

“Look, I’m just trying to do my job,” Bergsma complained.

“That’s the excuse that’s always used by soldiers committing atrocities,” yelled Debra Denker from behind a video camera.

“Yeah, this is an atrocity against Mother Nature,” shouted one of the protesters. After huddled consultations among police, Sahadi’s representatives and environmentalists, Richman-Cooper agreed to move her car--but only after a Building and Safety official waved a pink piece of paper at Bergsma--an Order To Comply--and warned that he would be cited if he put in a construction trailer and strung electrical and phone wires to it. Ben Reznik, Sahadi’s attorney, said he believes Bergsma has the authority to do so, but the city contended he did not have appropriate permits.

Frank Struve, the building inspector, was greeted as a savior by the environmentalists. “You could be elected mayor,” shouted Judy Marx, a leader of the Urban Wilderness Coalition, formed to protect Fryman Canyon.

After the dust settled, Richman-Cooper said she thought protesters had won a small victory in their fight--now in its fifth month.

“I think they would’ve put the construction trailer on the site if we hadn’t been there today,” she said.

Richman-Cooper also theorized that Bergsma’s presence at the canyon Monday would pressure City Hall politicians anew to raise the offer to buy out Sahadi.

“I think he may be pulling our strings to get the city to move,” she said. Last Friday, when Woo was told of Sahadi’s plans to start work, he agreed: “I think he’s just trying to raise the stakes.”

But attorney Reznik said his client’s effort to begin work in the canyon is not “a joke-- we’re not just trying to make noise.”

“If this incident gets the city to move on finding additional money to buy Fryman, that’s only a side result of what we’re doing,” Reznik said. “We just can’t sit idly by.”