Woman’s Bid Buys Time for Marquez Canyon : Development: The $1.8-million offer is money she doesn’t have. But the gesture rallies an effort to save site from developers.

When the bids for a 5 1/2-acre piece of open land in Marquez Canyon were unsealed last week, the bidders--to no one’s surprise--included a school looking for a quiet place to relocate, and a developer of luxury homes.

And then there was Lucy Bailey.

If accepted, her $1.8-million offer, which she delivered personally to the seller, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, would accomplish what hundreds of residents near the Pacific Palisades canyon had hoped for.

She offered to buy the secluded property and donate it to a parks agency with the guarantee that it be left forever undeveloped.

As news of the extraordinary proposal spread, some in the community assumed that their canyon was about to be saved by a wealthy benefactor.

But when the bidders gathered at a neighborhood church last week to describe their plans for the property to the conservancy’s board of directors, Lucy Bailey turned out to be, in her own words, “a person of ordinary means” who said she made the offer in hopes of rallying the community to save the property.

End of story? Not quite.

Quick to seize the opportunity, leaders of a neighborhood group that has fought to preserve the canyon have launched a fund-raising campaign to bolster the Bailey offer.

“We’ve got our chance now, and we’re confident we can come up with a way to save the property,” said Charles Beck, an official with the 450-member Marquez Knolls Neighborhood Assn.

The conservancy board, meanwhile, uncomfortable with having to sell the property to help replace funds used to acquire Fryman Canyon in the Hollywood Hills last January, has bent over backward to give Bailey and the neighbors a chance to put their money where their hearts are.

The board suspended a decision on how to dispose of the land until at least Sept. 9, and has given Bailey--which is to say the community--until then to come up with $10,000 earnest money.

Bailey, who has not been active in neighborhood affairs before and only learned that the canyon property was for sale three weeks ago, said she made the offer because she thought “it might just be a way of keeping the community’s chances alive.

“I never pretended to actually have that kind of money,” she said. A free-lance masseuse, she said she has lived near the canyon for 30 years and raised her son there.

“I’m going to try to donate $1,500 to the cause,” Bailey said. “If I can do that, maybe a lot of other people can come through with enough money to make up the difference.”

The other bids included a $1.75-million offer from developer Ralph Henkel, who wants to build five luxury homes in a gated community, and the Village School, a private elementary school, which offered $2 million contingent on acquiring building permits, and $1.6 million without the contingency.

The property is zoned to allow five single-family homes to be built there.

The school, which wants to move from Pacific Palisades’ main business district, would need to acquire a zoning change from Los Angeles officials to build in the canyon. In addition, the property lies within the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission, which would have final authority over any future development there.

Neighbors have expressed opposition to the school’s plan, saying it would increase traffic and threaten the tranquility of their secluded neighborhood of million-dollar homes.

The 5 1/2-acre parcel at the head of the canyon is not an untrammeled wilderness. Truckloads of dirt and other material have been dumped there over the years. It also contains some drainage pipe and other material left by its previous owner, the city Department of Water and Power.

School officials have said that, if allowed to build in the canyon, they would leave about 80% of the property as open space and would restore it to its natural state.

“This is not a pristine piece of property,” said Bob Pisano, chairman of the school’s board of directors. “Our plans would enhance the property overall.”

Henkel, the developer, could not be reached.

Bailey’s was the only bid that did not include a $10,000 earnest-money deposit.

Her offer almost certainly would have been dismissed, except that conservancy officials are clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of the land’s being developed as long as there is even a remote chance that a buyer may be willing to donate it as parkland.

“We want to give (the community) the first crack to see if they can come up with the funds, no doubt about it,” said Clark King, the conservancy’s assistant executive director.

The conservancy, a state agency, acquired the land in March from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as part of a complicated arrangement to finance the purchase of Fryman Canyon in the hills above Studio City.

The acquisition price for 63-acre Fryman Canyon in January was $10.4 million--$1.7 million above its appraised value. To make the deal possible, the City Council approved a controversial transfer of four city-owned properties, worth $1.7 million, to the developer who had wanted to build in Fryman Canyon. The developer, Fred Sahadi, had wanted to massively grade the canyon and build 26 luxury homes there.

The conservancy, whose officials complained that the price was too high, nonetheless was persuaded to come up with most of the remaining $8.7 million to complete the transaction.

To raise part of the funds, the conservancy took $2 million from a trust fund earmarked for park improvements in Temescal Canyon, also in Pacific Palisades. As part of the deal, the city Department of Water and Power transferred the Marquez Canyon property to the conservancy, with the understanding that proceeds from the sale would be used to reimburse the trust fund.

But residents near Marquez Canyon cried foul, saying their canyon should not be sacrificed to save Fryman Canyon.

About 400 residents showed up at a neighborhood block party three weeks ago, two days before the deadline for receiving bids.

Among them was Lucy Bailey.

“When I learned what had happened, I thought it was real sad,” she said. Two days later, without consulting anyone, she went to the conservancy offices in Malibu and handed a letter containing her bid to an official there.

“What Lucy did was buy us time,” said Beck, the neighborhood activist. “The rest is going to be up to the community.”