Group Clings to Hope of Purchasing Nearby Land

Neighbors who want to buy 5.5 acres of open land in Marquez Canyon to keep it from being developed have refused to give up, despite being far short of their goal.

“It’s a monumental task, but it isn’t insurmountable,” Charles Beck of the Marquez Park Open Space Committee said after being told that the group had until Dec. 2 to come up with $350,000 in good faith money or see its effort go up in smoke.

Beck, the group’s treasurer, said it had raised $15,000, with another $35,000 in pledges, toward a $1.8-million offer to buy the property, which is in Pacific Palisades.

The seller, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, told the group last week that it plans to accept other bids unless the group puts its money where its intentions are. The conservancy had extended a deadline for the group once before.

Although the conservancy board “did not pull the plug entirely,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director, “we were a little disappointed with their submission and the fact it’s late already and they’ve shown no real ability to come up with the necessary funds.”

A school has already offered to pay more than $2 million for the property, and there may be other bidders willing to pay even more in the event the residents’ attempt fails, he said.

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

To help raise funds for the Fryman purchase, the conservancy took $2 million from a trust fund earmarked for park improvements in Temescal Gateway Park, which is also in Pacific Palisades. As part of the deal, the DWP transferred the Marquez Canyon property to the conservancy with the understanding that proceeds from the sale would be used to reimburse the trust fund.

When some Marquez-area residents protested that the canyon in their neighborhood of million-dollar homes was being sacrificed to preserve another canyon 11 miles away, the conservancy bent over backward to accommodate a last-minute bid by the group’s president, who offered $1.8 million for the property, which would be donated as parkland.

The president, Lucy Bailey, acknowledged that she didn’t have the money, but her offer triggered a grass-roots effort by her neighbors to raise the funds.

In an interview, Beck expressed disappointment that the conservancy had not given the residents more help in their efforts to set up a special tax assessment district for the area near Marquez Canyon.

“I believe there are a lot of people out there who would be willing to give, if they could be provided with more specifics on what saving the canyon involves,” he said. “We thought we were going to have the conservancy’s help in doing that.”