Roadblock to Lovers’ Lane Urged : Development: The county is asked to close the part of Skyline Drive where luxury homes are to be built and make it a gated enclave.

On a clear night, the view from Skyline Drive is breathtaking: city lights twinkling below, airplanes taking off from LAX, and, farther in the distance, Santa Catalina Island.

The romantic hilltop setting is the perfect place, local teen-agers say, to take a date, park the car, and . . . well, never mind.

“A lot of people run outta gas up there,” joked Victor Martinez, 16, a sophomore at Los Altos High School.

But part of the street also happens to run through a site on which developers hope to build $1.5-million-plus homes. Buyers now negotiating to purchase the land from its current owners are wary of Skyline’s reputation as a lovers’ lane.

They say they want to clear the area of “riffraff,” and are asking the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to close off part of Skyline Drive and make it a private, gated community. Their request already has been approved by the county Regional Planning Commission, and is awaiting the board’s approval. County officials say this is the first such request this year, but others have been approved in the past.

Three individuals own the land that is now on the market, but the street belongs to the county. And closing it off to the public would be costly: The property owners would have to buy a portion of Skyline Drive from the county and maintain it at their own expense.

George Conrad--a real estate broker who is requesting the road closure on behalf of three would-be land buyers who wish to remain anonymous--said the 800-foot stretch of Skyline would cost $50,000, according to current market values.

But the price tag would be well worth it for the future homeowners, who wouldn’t want the panoramic view to be interrupted by kids fooling around, Conrad said.

“You can go there on any weekend day, and in the broad daylight you can see buck-naked boys and girls,” he said. He said he personally has chased embarrassed adolescents off the property.

On the Friday evening before Memorial Day, however, there was not a young lover--clothed or otherwise--in sight. Still, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said they consider Skyline, as well as other hilltop roads, a destination point for young lovers. But they said they are more concerned about the kids who go there to drink and spray graffiti on the walls.

“In law enforcement, if there are lovers parked up there in those areas, generally it is not a problem for us,” said Sgt. Brian Smith of the City of Industry sheriff’s substation. “They are not the ones who are noisy, not the ones who are drinking and partying. Those are more of a problem than the lovers.”

Skyline Drive also is a popular thoroughfare for hikers, who use it to get to Schabarum Trail and the Whittier Narrows Trail. Conrad said the gate would be designed so that hikers and other “legitimate” visitors can pass through.