School Acts to Preserve Its Property

Officials of the exclusive Ojai Valley School, aiming to forever block development on the school’s 209-acre campus, on Friday announced what officials called the county’s first preservation pact with a local land conservancy.

Officials said the arrangement, endorsed by the school’s trustees Thursday night, pledges that “in the unlikely event the school ever ceased to function as an educational institution,” it will transfer its property to the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy.

The arrangement is the first such deal for the fledgling conservancy and apparently the first such arrangement in the county, conservancy President Philip I. Moncharsh said. The conservancy’s goal, he added, is to recruit other property owners and build an open-space movement that is not dependent on governmental regulation or spending.

“All the trustees are sensitive to the meaning of open space . . . and the need for it,” said Michael Hermes, president of the school, and himself a member of the conservancy.

“I see it as a real showing of confidence in the land conservancy and the land conservancy movement in general,” Moncharsh said.

The school property “is visible and it’s significant. . . . You can’t go in or out of Ojai without going past it,” Moncharsh said.

“Can you imagine what Ojai would look like if this property were built on and you had a shopping center or mini-mall there?” he asked. “It would change the entire complexion of the community.”

The school’s upper campus includes 195 acres of largely open land in unincorporated Wilse Canyon in the upper Ojai Valley. That land is in an area zoned for agricultural use, Hermes said, and county restrictions already limit development possibilities there.

The school’s lower campus, which lies within Ojai city limits between Ojai Avenue and El Paseo Road, covers 13.9 acres, much of that used for horse corrals and athletic fields. The site is zoned “public/quasi public,” said Elaine Willman, city administrative assistant, and any substantial change in use would have to be approved by the city Planning Commission.

The school also owns six dwellings next to the lower campus. If the property were turned over to the conservancy, Hermes said, those would probably be sold, with a share of the money passing to the conservancy.