Builders’ Fees Rise With Ventura Freeway Costs : Calabasas: Supervisors voted for the new charges because the estimates to improve an interchange soared from $6 million to $15.3 million.

Improving the Parkway Calabasas interchange on the Ventura Freeway will cost more than twice what was originally estimated, so the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday dramatically increased fees on new development in the area to pay the difference.

Blaming inflation, overly optimistic development predictions and changes in the project required by the state, the county Department of Public Works estimated that it will cost $15.3 million instead of $6 million. The project involves improving on- and off-ramps and widening the freeway bridge at the interchange, where traffic is expected to double in the next 20 years.

In response, the supervisors unanimously agreed to increase development fees established four years ago from $600 to $4,920 per house and from $1.20 to $5.10 per square foot for commercial development.

Those are now the highest development fees assessed by the county, said Bruce Whitehead, a supervising civil engineer in the Department of Public Works. However, similar increases are being considered in the Santa Clarita Valley, he said.

About 1,500 houses in the 40-square-mile assessment district were built or approved under the lower fee and only 715 more are expected to be built at the higher amount, Whitehead said, leaving future buyers to shoulder much more of the cost of the freeway improvement than did their neighbors.

About 490,000 square feet of commercial and industrial development has occurred, he said, and 2 million square feet more is anticipated.

“Developers are going to be a little upset about the increases, which is normal, but they need the roads” to service their developments, Whitehead said.

However, Bob Burns, president of the Baldwin Co., which is seeking the supervisors’ approval Thursday to build 550 houses and a large commercial area in the district, said the company knew that the increase was coming and had previously agreed to pay it as a condition of county approval of the project.

In similar situations elsewhere in the county, developers usually have said such fees would be passed on to the buyers of houses and stores. But Burns said that could not be the case in the Calabasas area because the assessment area is so small.

“As a home buyer, for instance, are you going to pay more for a house in our development than for one just like it . . . in another development?” he asked.

Whitehead said the county gave up its quest to get the state Department of Transportation to pay for the Calabasas Parkway project in the mid-1980s when it became clear that it would be years before the funding became available, if ever.

The assessment district was formed in January, 1987. It is bounded roughly by Hidden Hills on the north, Las Virgenes Road on the west, Mulholland Drive on the east and Mulholland Highway on the south.

Recently, Caltrans concluded that the new freeway ramps should be widened to allow two cars to drive abreast when traffic is at its worst to prevent halted traffic from backing up onto the freeway, Whitehead said. That required moving a drainage ditch and purchase of more land at today’s higher prices, he said, both of which raised the cost of the project.

Whitehead said he did not know why development fell short of the original predictions or what those exact predictions were. Department managers who would know those answers were unavailable for comment Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

Under present plans, the eastbound ramps could be completed as early as March, 1992, and the westbound ramps and bridge by June, 1993, according to a report submitted to the supervisors by the Department of Public Works.