Open Space: County at the Crossroads : Development: The supervisors will face landmark decisions on Jordan and Ahmanson ranch projects.

Joe Edmiston jams on the brakes of his Chevy Blazer and slides to a halt on a muddy dirt road overlooking Simi Valley. Before him, beyond the housing tracts, is the rugged backbone of eastern Ventura County.

“Look at this!” says Edmiston, a state official whose job is to buy mountains and save them from development. “This is what people don’t understand. There still is greenery here. There is open space. There’s so much here left to save.”

The green ridges, and the oak-lined canyons between them form a wall of 15,000 acres that generally has stopped the sprawl of the Los Angeles Basin at the Ventura County line. San Fernando Valley streets dead-end at the boundary.

But the cities of the east county are now pushing up hillsides toward those ridges. And the owners of two long canyons, entertainer Bob Hope and the Ahmanson Land Co., want to mix golf tees and cul-de-sacs with ancient oak trees.

The County Board of Supervisors expects to vote on the Hope and Ahmanson projects in September. That vote will be a landmark in the history of fast-growing Ventura County. And it could change the rules that determine where new communities may be built.

Development is coming to the east county even if the two projects are not approved. The populations of Moorpark, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Oak Park have more than doubled since 1970. And planners say about 43,000 new houses will be built in the area by 2010, half again as many as exist today.

The supervisors’ decision on the Hope and Ahmanson proposals will be agonizingly difficult because the projects are different from dozens that have come before and dozens more now pending before city councils in the east county.

So far, Ventura County and its 10 cities generally have allowed large-scale construction only in or near cities. That has clustered development and preserved great swathes of open space throughout the county.

Hope and Ahmanson want to build on part of that open space--on cattle ranches that are the heart of the 10-mile-wide green buffer that separates the east county from Los Angeles.

“Approving major developments like this in an open-space area would establish a precedent that could be cited by developers in other areas of the county,” said planner Dennis Hawkins, who oversees the two projects for the county. He described the supervisors’ September vote as a “watershed decision.”

Both proposals normally would have been rejected out of hand because they clash with the county’s master plan for growth, supervisors have said. But the developers have offered trade-offs so attractive that they have sparked angry debate and split die-hard environmentalists down the middle.

The Hope project has such allure that it has pulled Gov. Pete Wilson and U.S. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. into the fray. Both officials last month endorsed a land swap that is central to the deal.

The Board of Supervisors must decide whether Hope and Ahmanson should be allowed to build 2,600 houses on 2,600 acres zoned as open space in exchange for turning over nearly 10,000 acres to park agencies. Or can the county permanently block large-scale development on the two ranches without such trade-offs?

Hope has offered to swap, donate or sell cheaply about 5,700 acres to park agencies if developers are allowed to build 750 houses and a tournament golf course on his Jordan Ranch property.

The Ahmanson company would dedicate 4,100 of its 5,477 acres to the National Park Service if it can build 1,850 houses, a golf course and 400,000 square feet of stores and offices.

Critics insist that the two projects would cause massive environmental damage, clogging streets, fouling the air, taxing limited water supplies and destroying critical wildlife habitat.

They also argue that if the two ranches cannot be preserved intact, then no private property in the county is safe from development.

Hope’s Jordan Ranch, which is within the boundaries of a national recreation area, “in particular, is so highly protected that if we can’t preserve it, what chance is there for any other piece of open space in this county,” said county Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, in whose district the projects are located.

But to supporters, both the Hope and Ahmanson proposals represent rare opportunities to put vast stretches of parkland into public ownership.

Ventura County may never get a better deal than the one offered by Hope, said Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency created to preserve land in the mountains that ring the San Fernando Valley. The conservancy would be a chief benefactor of the Hope deal, receiving about 4,800 acres.

Some environmentalists and county officials insist that no deal is necessary since Hope’s project can be blocked by the Board of Supervisors.

“There is a trend to unseat elected officials who do not protect the environment,” said Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, a slow-growth advocate elected in November. “Joe Edmiston and the others are selling out to developers in these deals, so it’s up to the residents to be the watchdogs for these open spaces.”

But Edmiston said he heard the same arguments a decade ago about two giant housing projects proposed in Thousand Oaks. Those projects, Dos Vientos and MGM Ranch, now have been approved.

“These people are holding out for open space,” Edmiston said. “But what happens when Hope dies and his estate sells to (developers) Nate Shapell or Ray Watt? Shapell has all that juice, and it will just happen.”

David Brown, a Calabasas environmentalist, agrees.

“What really counts is what you get in public open space,” said Brown, who for years has fought to save open space in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. “Otherwise it just gets rezoned when the next supervisor comes down the pike.”

The Hope and Ahmanson projects have been analyzed together since mid-1988.

“Ahmanson and Jordan. It’s hard to say one name without the other,” Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee said. “And I would guess we would treat one pretty much like we treat the other.”

Developers fear exactly that: One project may generate enough opposition that the supervisors will reject both.

Hope’s Jordan Ranch proposal appears to be in the most trouble. VanderKolk made its defeat a cornerstone of her successful underdog campaign last spring against Madge L. Schaefer. Even after intervention by Wilson and Lujan on its behalf in March, four of five supervisors said they still had serious concerns about the project.

Only Supervisor Vicky Howard seems to favor Jordan. But Supervisor John K. Flynn, impressed by the governor’s interest, said for the first time last week that the project might be acceptable if cut in half.

“If it got down to 350 homes, it would have a better shot,” Flynn said. “That’s a number that would attract the attention of the other members of the board, and it would cause me to take another look.”

The Jordan developers first proposed 1,152 houses, lowered the number to 750 last year and recently said the number could come down again. The Sierra Club’s regional environmental committee has endorsed the deal if reduced to 500 houses.

The Ahmanson project has gained support in the last year and seems to have a better chance of passing.

The company was praised by supervisors in January after it cut its proposal from 3,000 dwellings to 1,850, reduced commercial building by 87% and increased its contribution to the park service by 1,000 acres.

Ahmanson has concentrated development on Laskey Mesa and nearby rolling hills, reducing the number of acres on which it would build to just 10% of the ranch. And Ahmanson proposes no construction in pristine Las Virgenes Canyon, an important wildlife corridor.

Ahmanson officials also have fostered the goodwill of supervisors. “With Ahmanson, if you say you don’t like something, they change it. We’ve never been able to do that with Jordan,” Supervisor Susan K. Lacey said.

Howard said she sees the Ahmanson project “as a very natural extension” of Los Angeles, Hidden Hills and Calabasas, which are next to it. So does Flynn. Even VanderKolk said she would like the Ahmanson project, if only it were in a different location.

“It’s a good-looking project,” she said. “It strives to provide affordable housing, camping areas, cultural areas and open space. And it has access.”

Four-lane Victory Boulevard, a main San Fernando Valley thoroughfare, ends at Ahmanson’s eastern boundary, and Las Virgenes Road could be linked to it on the south. Both would funnel the project’s traffic onto the nearby Ventura Freeway.

Jordan Ranch also is close to the Ventura Freeway. But getting to the ranch from the freeway is a problem Hope has not yet solved.

Only a rutted dirt road that is impassable after a heavy rain now connects the property and the freeway. And the city of Agoura Hills, through which the road runs, opposes widening or paving it. So Potomac Investment Associates, the developer working with Hope, has offered to exchange land with the National Park Service for an access road.

If approved, the park service would swap 59 acres--an 80-foot-wide, one-mile sliver through a corner of the park--for 864 acres of the ranch.

Hope’s offer is contingent upon approval of both the land exchange by the park service and the Jordan Ranch development by the county supervisors.

The park service has said it will not announce its decision until the supervisors vote in September. Project opponents have said it is scandalous that federal officials would consider trading away federal parkland to a developer.

Developers of Ahmanson and Jordan are keenly aware of comparisons between the projects. And they have begun to quietly and carefully point out the differences.

“Ahmanson is still 3 1/2 or 4 times larger than what we’re proposing,” Fred Maas, a Potomac vice president, said after Ahmanson scaled back its project in January. As a result, the Hope project has far fewer drawbacks in areas of traffic and air quality, he said.

Peter Kyros Jr., general partner at Potomac, said of Ahmanson: “Their development is just fine, but they’re not the same thing as we are.”

Jordan Ranch would be an enclave for the rich--luxury houses surrounding one of only 15 golf courses in the nation owned by the Professional Golf Assn. Tour. It would be a tournament site on the senior tour. A Bob Hope golf museum would be located there.

Ahmanson’s dwellings, from condos to estates, would range from $140,000 to more than $1 million and average about $260,000.

Both developers have stressed the trade-offs they are offering.

With construction limited to a corner of the 5,477-acre ranch, Ahmanson would now dedicate the most environmentally sensitive part of its property to the park service, said Donald Brackenbush, president of Ahmanson Land Co. “We intend to build on land that is flat or rolling and devoid of sensitive plant communities,” he said.

Opponents say that the mesa where Ahmanson would build is an important feeding area for birds of prey, such as hawks and golden eagles, and that construction would drive them away.

The Hope deal is more complicated, involving three separate parcels in the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills and the Santa Susana Mountains.

The entertainer would give the conservancy 173 of 339 acres at Corral Canyon in Malibu; deed 1,094 of 2,300 acres at Jordan Ranch to state and federal park agencies; and sell the 4,364-acre Runkle Ranch, just north of the Simi Valley Freeway at the county line, to the conservancy for a below-market $10 million.

“It’s an accident in history that Mr. Hope owns the beginning, center and end of the most important wildlife corridor in this region,” Kyros said.

David E. Gackenback, superintendent of the national recreation area that includes Jordan, said he knows of no other time when the park service has been offered land worth so much. And Edmiston said that the Hope deal is, in fact, one of the most significant parkland transactions in recent Southern California history.

More than half of Jordan Ranch would be developed, causing 945 of the ranch’s 3,700 oak trees to be uprooted, developers acknowledge. But China Flat, the highest plateau in the Simi Hills, would be saved. The plateau has meadows and oak woodlands, sandstone cliffs and caves and spectacular views of the mountains and the ocean.

“China Flat always has been considered the most aesthetically impressive area in the region,” conservancy spokeswoman Julie Zeidner said. “And China Flat acts as a kind of spokes-wheel for the wildlife corridors of all three mountain ranges.”

Experts on the movement of wildlife have said that acquisition of Hope’s Runkle Ranch alone would be a major step toward safeguarding a 35-mile wildlife corridor that stretches from Santa Clarita to the Pacific.

“This is the last chance. If this deal doesn’t go through, it really is the death knell for any link between the Santa Monica Mountains and the mountainous areas to the north,” Michael Soule, a professor at UC Santa Cruz and a top wildlife authority, said last year.

Opponents say that Palo Comado Canyon, where Hope’s golf course would be built, is a wildlife habitat that is just as important as China Flat. And its development, they say, would contribute to the destruction of the regional wildlife corridor the Hope deal is supposed to save.

Development in that canyon also would spoil pristine Cheeseboro Canyon, the 2,400-acre park service preserve next to Jordan, they say.

“The impact of this project on Cheeseboro has been grossly understated,” said John Perry, an Agoura activist. “Cheeseboro would look down on urbanization where it now looks down on open space.”

Hope’s overall plan was undermined in December, when the California Coastal Commission voted 11 to 1 against a Potomac proposal to build 26 luxury houses on 19 acres of the Corral Canyon property. Kyros said the whole deal might be dead.

But when Gov. Wilson and Secretary Lujan announced their support for the land swap--though not for construction of a specific number of houses on Jordan Ranch--the package was revived.

Over the months, Hope also has gained bargaining strength with Simi Valley officials, because Los Angeles County has offered about $35 million for an 800-acre portion of Runkle Ranch called Blind Canyon. The county, desperately short of landfill space, wants to build a garbage dump there.

Hope has not responded to the offer, waiting instead to see how Jordan Ranch fares before the county supervisors.

Jordan opponents say no landfill can be built in Blind Canyon without Ventura County approval, because a third of the landfill would be in this county, as is the road that garbage trucks would use to get to it.

“It’s a developer’s hoax,” insisted Mary Wiesbrock, a director of Save Open Space, an Agoura-based group.

But Stephen R. Maguin, who is overseeing the search for new Los Angeles County landfills, said the Blind Canyon landfill and a road to it can both be constructed within that county, if necessary.

The specter of a new landfill has made an impression on Supervisor Howard, a former Simi Valley councilwoman.

“I see it as a real threat,” she said. “Anything can be done if there’s enough money involved, and landfills are going to be big moneymakers in the future. I feel just as strongly about Blind Canyon being protected as people on the Agoura and Thousand Oaks side feel about Jordan Ranch.”

Indeed, the strongest support for--and opposition to--both the Jordan and Ahmanson projects often has come from people most affected by the projects.

If Jordan is approved by the supervisors, Simi Valley gets a park, not a landfill. And traffic from both Ahmanson and Jordan would flow onto the Ventura Freeway, not the Simi Valley Freeway.

“It’s a trade-off,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “A few additional homes versus thousands of acres of additional open space. Those kinds of trade-offs are what will eventually solve the problem of open space in private hands. It’s the only thing that is going to remove pressure to build on it.”

Conversely, if the Jordan project passes, Agoura Hills would absorb its traffic. And Oak Park residents who hike the ridge between their community and Jordan Ranch would look down on a housing development, not an unspoiled canyon thick with oak trees.

Duane Skavdahl, chairman of the Municipal Advisory Council of Oak Park, said his community is moving toward cityhood partly to be in a better position to block the project.

If the county rejects Hope’s plan, Simi Valley has said it would be interested in annexing the property and giving Hope a second hearing.

“If Simi Valley comes in and tries to shove that development down our throats, we will try to expedite incorporation and fight that off,” Skavdahl said.

Despite the uproar over Ahmanson and Jordan, the projects would account for just 6% of the new dwellings expected in the east county over the next 20 years and 2% of those anticipated countywide, planners say.

But Wiesbrock, of Save Open Space, said that so much building already has been approved along the Ventura Freeway in the Thousand Oaks-Agoura Hills area that gridlock is a virtual certainty in years to come.

Ahmanson’s traffic would contribute to jams at freeway interchanges at Valley Circle Boulevard and Las Virgenes Road, while Jordan’s would clog the ramps at Chesebro and Kanan roads, she said.

Even without the two projects, daily vehicle trips on the nearby Ventura Freeway will increase from 162,000 to 232,400 over the next 20 years, state traffic planners predict. Ahmanson would add 5,000 to 6,000 trips to the total and Jordan about 4,300 more, developers say. Total trips from the projects, including those off the freeway, are estimated at 20,000 for Ahmanson and 9,430 for Jordan.

“We’re already in overload,” Wiesbrock said. “Both projects are terrible when you consider what is going to be lost. Everybody feels the traffic and air quality, and now there are water shortages.”

Wiesbrock notes that major environmental agencies are hardly unanimous in their support of the Hope deal. The National Parks and Conservation Assn. has now joined the Wilderness Society in opposing it. And while a Sierra Club regional committee has endorsed the Hope package with conditions, the club’s chapter in western Ventura County opposes it, she said.

But Edmiston says that opposing the Hope deal is short-sighted.

“The issue to me is planning for 20 years ahead,” he said. “(Developer) Dale Poe says he’s buying up land that he’ll never develop. He says, ‘I’m buying up stock for my children.’ That’s what we’ve got to do.”

Meanwhile, throughout Ventura County, city leaders are watching closely how the county supervisors deal with pressure to allow large-scale construction in open spaces.

They are aware that the supervisors approved the last large project proposed in an area zoned as open space.

In 1987, supervisors granted billionaire David H. Murdock permission to construct 600 luxury houses on 1,900 acres at Lake Sherwood near Thousand Oaks. They cited his improvements to the area’s sewer and water systems as the reason.

Moorpark Mayor Paul W. Lawrason Jr. said the supervisors’ vote this time will be “a foretelling of what might happen in open-space areas.

“It would be a very dramatic change in land use in this end of the county,” he said. “It’s something we need to look at very carefully. We don’t want to set a precedent that is going to allow overdevelopment.”

WHAT’S LEFT

OPEN SPACE

A 10-mile buffer of open space separates the San Fernando Valley from eastern Ventura County. Entertainer Bob Hope and the Ahmanson Land Co. own most of the property. County supervisors are considering proposals by Hope and Ahmanson that would build 2,600 houses on 2,600 acres, but also turn over about 10,000 acres to park agencies. Critics say the projects violate open-space guidelines and would worsen traffic congestion and air pollution.

Supporters say the deals would preserve vast stretches of parkland that public agencies cannot afford to buy and save the region’s most important wildlife corridor.

Ahmanson Ranch

5,477 acres.

Owned by Ahmanson Land Co.

34 houses allowed under current zoning.

Proposed: 1,850 houses and 400,000 square feet of stores and offices at southeast quarter of ranch. 4,100 acres deeded to the National Park Service. Las Virgenes Canyon wildlife corridor preserved.

Jordan Ranch

2,300 acres.

Owned by Bob Hope.

14 houses allowed under current zoning.

Proposed: 750 houses and a tournament golf course on 1,200 acres; construction on Palo Comado Canyon wildlife corridor; park agencies get 1,100 acres, including scenic China Flat on upper ranch; key is swap of 59 acres by National Park Service to developer for access road.

Runkle Ranch

4,364 acres.

Owned by Bob Hope.

Proposed: A state park agency would pay $10 million for property; deal depends on approval of Jordan Ranch project; considered a vital link in wildlife corridor between Santa Susana Mountains and Simi Hills.

Sale would block Los Angeles County bid for landfill on part of site.

Rugged terrain makes other development unlikely.

Santa Monica Mountains Nat’l Rec. Area

2,400 acres

Cheeseboro Canyon is a principal wildlife corridor.

Part of 18,000-acre federal park system in mountains ringing San Fernando Valley.

Ridgelines overlook Jordan and Ahmanson ranches.