Huge Parkland Deal Wins OK From Bob Hope

Entertainer Bob Hope agreed Thursday to a deal that would turn more than 10,000 acres of mountain property ringing the San Fernando Valley into public parkland--the largest park dedication of its kind in decades.

The complex deal would cluster two giant housing projects at a single Ventura County location and increase by 16% state and federal park holdings in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains and the Simi Hills.

“The additional land includes some of the most beautiful--and most accessible--areas in the Santa Monica Mountains,” Gov. Pete Wilson said in a statement announcing the deal.

“In preserving these open spaces, Bob Hope is making a special gift to all Californians,” the governor said. Wilson’s intervention in March helped revive discussions between developers and Ventura County officials.

The signature of Hope, who agreed to sell 7,363 acres for a below-market price of $29.5 million, seals an agreement tentatively reached three weeks ago between a developer working with Hope and the Ahmanson Land Co. The Ahmanson company will donate another 3,025 acres as parkland.

The deal is contingent on approval by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. But most supervisors have expressed support for the development projects if they are consolidated on the Ahmanson Ranch in the Simi Hills, as now proposed.

“I feel nothing but positive vibes about this from the rest of the board,” said Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, who suggested a consolidated project to the developers in August, touching off secret negotiations.

Neither Hope nor his attorney, Payson Wolff, could be reached for comment Thursday.

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said Hope is being enormously generous--selling his land for less than one-third of the $12,000 to $15,000 per acre that park agencies are paying for parcels nearby. In all, park agencies will get parklands worth between $120 million and $150 million, officials have said.

“I really think this is the beginning of turning the Los Angeles Basin from a ‘Blade Runner’ future to a more pastoral one,” said Edmiston, whose agency would be a prime beneficiary of the deal.

The $29.5 million to be paid to Hope will come from state bonds and federal appropriations, park officials said.

But not everyone is happy with the deal. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, whose San Fernando Valley district is across the county line from the consolidated Ahmanson Ranch project, has said she will try to block it because of traffic concerns.

And Agoura Hills-based Save Open Space also opposes the joint development project. It would violate Los Angeles County policies that prohibit new developments unless they are adjacent to existing cities, the group says.

“We’re pleased and thrilled” that Hope has agreed to sell his mountain holdings, said Mary Wiesbrock of Save Open Space. But she said the huge consolidated project on the Ahmanson Ranch raises serious traffic and air quality concerns--adding that her group hopes to see the Ahmanson property acquired as open space along with Hope’s lands.

But the project has received widespread support from other public officials and environmentalists because it would preserve all of Hope’s 2,300-acre Jordan Ranch near Agoura Hills as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The recreation area, administered by the National Park Service, includes land in the Santa Monica Mountains from Griffith Park to Point Mugu State Park. The agreement would fill critical gaps in the area’s regional wildlife corridor.

The deal would put into public ownership 10,388 acres on five separate parcels in the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains.

Under the consolidated plan, Hope would sell to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency, 347 acres in Liberty Canyon in Calabasas, 339 acres in Corral Canyon in Malibu, the 2,308-acre Jordan Ranch and the 4,369-acre Runkle Ranch just north of the Simi Valley Freeway at the Los Angeles County line.

The key change in the new plan is that 750 houses and a Professional Golfers’ Assn. golf course planned for Hope’s Jordan Ranch would be incorporated instead into the Ahmanson project.

The Ahmanson company would build another 1,850 houses and a town center with 400,000 square feet of offices and stores, as previously planned.

Although developers agreed to a combined project in mid-October, key sticking points remained in Potomac’s negotiations with Hope, including whether the PGA Tour and Hope would approve the new plan.

Under the previous proposal, Jordan Ranch would have been an enclave for the rich--luxury homes surrounding one of only 15 golf courses in the nation owned by the PGA Tour. It would have been a tournament site on the senior tour, and a Bob Hope golf museum would have been built there.

The new plan also calls for a PGA course named after Hope, though negotiations with the PGA are not complete, said Potomac spokesman Fred Maas.

Attorney Wolff said last month that the 88-year-old comedian originally was “upset by the notion that what he envisioned as a beautiful, great golf course on the southern part of the Jordan Ranch couldn’t come about.”