Japanese Developer Plans L.A. Golf Club : Tujunga Wash: Minoru Isutani wants to build a $60-million course that will lure the big tournaments.

No one would ever confuse the barren Tujunga Wash area of the San Fernando Valley with Pebble Beach, the picturesque village on the Monterey Peninsula. But to Minoru Isutani, they serve the same purpose.

Isutani, a reclusive and controversial Japanese developer, is trying to assemble several prestigious U.S. golf courses and give them a revered place in the world of professional golf. He bought Pebble Beach Co., which includes the famed Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill golf courses, hotels and other assets, for roughly $800 million in September. Now his company, Los Angeles-based Cosmo World Corp., wants to build a 355-acre, $60-million private golf course and clubhouse in the Tujunga Wash.

Why the Tujunga Wash, which is a flood plain that lies just northwest of Sunland? Because it offers several features that Cosmo believes are crucial if its Los Angeles International Golf Club is ever to attract a major tournament. And that’s how Isutani hopes to set his new course apart from the thousands of others and drive up the value of the property exponentially.

The proposed site is within the city limits of Los Angeles; it’s relatively flat, making it easy for galleries to roam the course; it’s close to the Foothill Freeway and has an access road, Foothill Boulevard; and it could also look good on television, as the course site lies in the flat plane below a wedge of the San Gabriel Mountains that would serve as a backdrop.

Isutani, 50, is a golf nut who has made his reputation in this country by purchasing some of the great names in the golf business. Besides Pebble Beach and Spyglass, two years ago he bought Ben Hogan Co. of Fort Worth, a maker of golf equipment begun by the legendary golfer.

Now Isutani wants to build something great in golf, rather than just buy it. Cosmo makes no secret of its desire to pull the Los Angeles Open, one of the regular stops of professional golf’s PGA Tour, from its current site at the renowned Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades to Isutani’s Los Angeles International course. Failing that, Cosmo wants to land another PGA tournament.

“We’d like to get the L.A. Open, we’d like to get some other events, like maybe the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship,” said Steve Timm, a Cosmo vice president who is heading the Tujunga project. “Most developers who are spending the kind of money we’re spending are always looking for a way to showcase their project, and what better way to do it than to have it on television?”

But getting the L.A. Open is easier said than done. The tournament is run by the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, which is currently negotiating a new five-year contract with Riviera that would begin after the 1991 L.A. Open is held at Riviera next February.

In a bit of irony, Riviera is dubbed “Hogan’s Alley” because Hogan won several tournaments there, including the U.S. Open in 1948. But the course is now owned by a separate Japanese company, Marukin Shoji Co., reflecting the growing push by the Japanese to combine their desire for U.S. real estate investments and their passion for golf.

Even after five years, “there would have to be some tremendous, compelling reasons for us to be there and leave Riviera,” said Bob Leo, executive director of the chamber and the L.A. Open. “Right now we’re not contemplating any move.”

In the meantime, Cosmo’s course would be a private club limited to 500 members who would pay about $40,000 or $50,000 to join, and $300 to $350 a month in dues. The club does not plan any housing around the course, but members could relax in a 40,000-square-foot clubhouse. Cosmo isn’t accepting membership deposits until it gets approval to break ground, but Timm claims 900 people have expressed interest in joining.

Before they can tee it up, Cosmo has to spend several million dollars more than it planned to assuage environmental and flooding concerns--even though the wash is dry most of the time. And Cosmo has several more hurdles to jump before it can start construction in April at the earliest.

For instance, there’s the thorny matter of the slender horned spine flower. The flower grows in two sections of the wash, and because it’s on the federal government’s endangered species list, Cosmo had to spend more than $1 million to redesign the course to keep the fairways a safe distance from the plants.

That’s small change compared with what Cosmo would spend to alleviate any problem of flood damage to nearby neighborhoods. Cosmo is ready to build a $15-million channel that would run across the northern part of the wash, keeping any flood waters away from both the course and houses in Sunland that lie just south and east of the site.

Cosmo, in fact, makes a big point about its willingness to spend that kind of money for what it believes is a major public-works and safety project.

“We right now can take 200 or 300 homes out of reach of a possible 100-year event,” Timm said, referring to a catastrophic, once-in-a-century flood. “Our golf course will protect the lives of people. That’s the one thing that’s been overshadowed” by Cosmo’s critics.

Critics of the course include certain homeowners groups in the area such as the Sunland-Tujunga Assn. of Residents. The group has yet to say whether it’s formally for or against the course, but it clearly has lots of concerns.

J. Sylvia Gross, land-use chairman for the group, listed two of them: Would fertilizers and insecticides used by the course find their way into the water system? Would the 3 million cubic yards of fill that Cosmo proposes to haul into the site be washed away by a major storm?

“We also want to know how polluted that fill is before it gets put back on wetland,” she said.

But the Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce and other residents support the course. One is Clark Drane, a former insurance man and former member of the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals. He organized a group to help support Cosmo through the approval process.

“Sooner or later something is going to happen to that land in the wash, and it couldn’t be put to any better use than a golf course,” he said. As for the critics, Drane said “there are some people, rightly or wrongly, who would oppose anything in the wash, even if it was gold bullion you put in there.”

The go-ahead must come from the city Planning Commission. The panel is awaiting an environmental impact report before it slates public hearings on the plan. The commission’s decision could ultimately be appealed to the City Council. If all goes well, Cosmo would begin building the course in April, construction would take about 15 months and the first golfer could tee off in the summer of 1992, Timm said.

Timm, a former assistant club professional golfer at Riviera, joined Cosmo in 1986 and found the site for the Los Angeles International course in early 1987. Nearly all of the land was owned by two entities--the Mary Akmadzich family trust and CalMat Co., a cement company. Cosmo paid $2 million, or $5,500 an acre, for the trust’s 360 acres, and obtained CalMat’s 130 acres by swapping an equal amount of land it owned to the west of the wash, Timm said.

Isutani, who lives in Tokyo and is a “middle 80s to low 90s” golfer by Timm’s account, also is trying to develop a golf resort near Las Vegas and is co-developing one along the Kona Coast in Hawaii. He has drawn some controversy here and in Japan, where his affiliated companies own 13 golf courses.

Isutani has been accused by some critics of allegedly overselling memberships to his Japanese courses. Japanese magazines also have questioned his relationship with former NTT Corp. Chairman Hisashi Shinto, who was convicted last month of political bribery in a stock scandal case. As a result, Isutani’s application for a Nevada gaming license reportedly is getting close scrutiny by authorities.

Cosmo officials have denied any wrongdoing on Isutani’s part.

Financially, Isutani does not expect to start earning an immediate return on his investment from the Tujunga course’s operations, especially because of the added costs needed to address the environmental problems of the area, Timm said.

Isutani is more concerned about where the course will rank among golf’s U.S. venues. Timm said the question is: “What will it be worth when it’s done?”