Critics Fear a Long-Term Effect From Fryman Deal : Parklands: At $10.9 million, the canyon purchase may delay future land acquisitions by the conservancy.

Buying Fryman Canyon in Studio City at the current price would be by far the costliest purchase ever made by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, giving the state parks agency and its conservationist allies a splitting financial headache.

Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston warned recently that it would be a long time before the conservancy could buy more parkland in the city of Los Angeles if Fryman Canyon soaks up $10.9 million. That’s the price called for under a proposal by Mayor Tom Bradley and Councilman Michael Woo, who represents the area, to buy the canyon from developer Fred Sahadi.

Sahadi’s plans to build 26 luxury houses on the steeply sloped, woodsy site set off weeks of campaigning by annoyed neighbors and environmentalists, who pushed the idea of buying the canyon for parkland to block development.

But at $10.9 million, the 31-acre Fryman property would cost more than $350,000 per acre.

Of this amount, $8.7 million would be paid by the conservancy under the Bradley-Woo plan, thus making the conservancy’s per-acre cost $280,000--more than five times the amount of its most expensive previous purchase of raw land.

The conservancy’s most expensive acquisition to date has been the Holland-Avaness property, 22 acres in the Santa Clarita Woodlands area acquired in July for $5.1 million, or $240,909 per acre, according to a conservancy list of its 10 most recent purchases.

But the Holland-Avaness property, named after its former owners, was costly for unusual reasons. Located west of the Golden State Freeway at the foot of Rice and East canyons, the land offered the conservancy a desirably strategic position to block access to Towsley Canyon, which is being considered by Los Angeles County as a potential site for a landfill that the conservancy opposes.

The site also has a motel and stable on it and is commercially zoned, Edmiston said, unlike the vacant land in Fryman Canyon.

The most expensive undeveloped, residentially zoned property ever purchased by the conservancy was a 37-acre Cherry Canyon parcel in La Canada Flintridge that went for $1.75 million, according to the conservancy list. That works out to $47,200 per acre--less than one-fifth the per-acre cost considered for Fryman.

(Although Sahadi’s entire Fryman property is 63 acres, 32 acres are already pledged to be donated to the conservancy, and so the purchase price applies only to the remaining 31 acres.)

Edmiston is not the only one fretting about the price tag on the deal proposed by Bradley and Woo.

Regrets, concerns and recriminations over the cost of the proposed deal also can be heard from other quarters, from San Fernando Valley environmental activist David Brown to Westside Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and advocates of a plan to upgrade parkland in the Pacific Palisades.

The doubts boil down to two questions:

* Is Fryman Canyon worth what the Bradley-Woo proposal offers?

* What other parkland purchases must be sacrificed or postponed to pay for Fryman’s huge cost?

Such last-minute misgivings and nervousness irritate the mayor’s office and have prompted Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani to speculate that perhaps Edmiston is seeking to torpedo purchase of the canyon.

“For some reason, Joe Edmiston and the conservancy have cooled to the idea of buying Fryman Canyon,” Fabiani said in an interview Thursday. “We feel we reached a fair resolution of the price and if Edmiston and the conservancy are changing their minds about it, they should step forward and say so instead of engaging in behind-the-scenes maneuvers to scuttle the project.”

Edmiston denies he’s trying to scuttle the purchase, but he does point out the dilemma posed by such a high-priced venture.

“Are we going to dump all our city of Los Angeles projects in one basket?” Edmiston asked. “No one should be surprised” if the conservancy, as it tries to serve its other geographic constituencies, says “we’re going to have to take away from other projects planned for the city of Los Angeles because you got Fryman,” he said.

“It’s not irrational to say: What about Ventura County and its needs?”

Yaroslavsky this week questioned the Bradley-Woo deal after being briefed by Edmiston about its impact on planned conservancy purchases in his district, which straddles the Santa Monica Mountains from Franklin Canyon to the San Diego Freeway.

“Up until now you haven’t heard from other quarters” about their concerns about buying Fryman for $10.9 million, but that will change, Yaroslavsky pointedly warned Woo on the council floor. “There are major acquisitions that are much cheaper than this one.”

Several of these are in his own district, Yaroslavsky said. Proposed conservancy projects in Yaroslavsky’s district include spending $400,000 to build a paleontological field station at Fossil Ridge--a Studio City slope rich in fossils of ancient marine life that is already owned by the conservancy--and buying two vacant properties near Beverly Glen and Mulholland drives.

Brown, a Valley environmental activist, said in an interview last week that he has increasing doubts about the advisability of the Fryman purchase. One concern is the accessibility of the canyon to public transit, Brown said.

“If people from the flatlands can’t get to it, I don’t want to buy it,” he said.

Brown also said that the bulk of a conservancy-owned parcel adjacent to the Fryman property is fenced off because vagrants have camped there in the past. “We bought that for $1 million and we’re not getting our full value out of it,” he said, wondering if the same might not happen at Fryman.

The proposed price also drew protests from Pacific Palisades. To fund the Fryman purchase, the Bradley-Woo deal envisions tapping all of the $1.96 million Runyon Canyon Acquisition Trust Fund, established for land purchases in the canyon in Hollywood. In seeking Recreation and Parks Commission approval to use this money, Woo offered no absolute guarantees that he would be able to replenish the account with other funds.

Woo’s failure to provide such assurances left advocates of Temescal Canyon Park in Pacific Palisades unhappy. Temescal Canyon has been slated to receive a $719,000 loan from the Runyon Canyon fund to finance plans to construct a parking lot, restrooms, a kiosk and place utility lines underground.

With funding for their park in jeopardy, Palisades residents fired off angry letters to council members, arguing against any plan to sidetrack funding for the Temescal improvements.

The problem, as Edmiston sees it, is that there’s a reaction against the Bradley-Woo deal because it gives too much to the developer. “People are now beginning to realize the jeopardy,” Edmiston said.

“Fryman is not so crucial that we should buy it at any cost,” Brown said.

But Fabiani, the mayor’s top aide, said the mayor’s office is mystified by sudden concerns about the conservancy projects that would have to be postponed or dropped because of the Fryman purchase.

“It seems strange to bring up other competing interests now,” Fabiani said. It is “not very comforting,” he said, to hear that the conservancy’s professional staff is only now coming to grips with the fiscal ramifications of buying Fryman Canyon.

PARK PURCHASES Last 10 land purchases by Santa Monica Mtns. Conservancy within past year including five most expensive in conservancy history (ranked by cost per acre)

Property Price Acres Price/acre Fryman Canyon $8.7-$10.9m 31 $280,645-$351,612 (Studio City) Holland/Avanes* $4.2m 21 $200,000* (Santa Clarita) Cherry Canyon $1.75m 37 $47,297 (La Canada area) Malibu Canyon $1.45m 75 $19,333 (Malibu) Charmlee Park/ $792,000 63 $12,571 Encinal Cyn. (Malibu) Red Rock Cyn. $225,000 20 $11,250 (Malibu) Malibu Canyon $2.2m 201 $10,945 Furst $1.4m 140 $10,000 (Simi Hills) Sage Ranch $4.2m 625 $6,720 (Simi Hills) Red Rock Cyn. $225,000 40 $5,625 (Malibu) Towsley Cyn. $500,000 145 $3,447 (Santa Clarita)

Property Date acquired Fryman Canyon Proposed (Studio City) Holland/Avanes* July 1990 (Santa Clarita) Cherry Canyon Aug. 1989 (La Canada area) Malibu Canyon Nov. 1989 (Malibu) Charmlee Park/ Dec. 1989 Encinal Cyn. (Malibu) Red Rock Cyn. Dec. 1989 (Malibu) Malibu Canyon Jan. 1990 Furst June 1990 (Simi Hills) Sage Ranch June 1990 (Simi Hills) Red Rock Cyn. Jan. 1990 (Malibu) Towsley Cyn. Nov. 1989 (Santa Clarita)

* To date, the highest priced property per acre purchased by Conservancy. This is the only improved commercially-zoned property purchased on this list. Other sites are unimproved and/or residentially-zoned properties.

Source: Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy