Parcel Bid Stuns Preservation Group : Development: A member offers to pay $1.75 million for land in Marquez Canyon as a site for luxury homes.

A member of a group that had wanted to buy 5 1/2 acres of open land in Pacific Palisades’ Marquez Canyon to keep it from being developed is trying to buy the property himself and build up to five luxury homes there.

Charles Beck has offered $1.75 million for the property, easily topping the only other bid, a $1.4-million offer from a private school, officials of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy said.

The conservancy, which owns the property, made the offers public this week.

Beck’s offer caught some members of the Marquez Canyon Preservation Assn. by surprise, and dismayed others.

“I’m speechless, that’s about all I care to say right now,” said Lucy Bailey, the neighborhood group’s president, when she learned of the offer.

Beck did not return several phone calls from a reporter seeking comment.

As treasurer for the preservation association, Beck was a supporter of the group’s own $1.8-million bid for the property, and had been a vocal critic of development in the canyon.

“He really is off on his own on this one,” said Alan Tippie, another member of the group. “Charles has apparently decided that in the event we are unsuccessful, he wants to be a player from a development standpoint.”

In a letter to the conservancy, Beck said he and his wife, Gerry Relin, had developed similar properties in the past and considered themselves to be “one of the most knowledgeable and best suited parties to acquire this property.”

Although the conservancy board last month rejected the preservation association’s bid after the group was able to raise only $25,000, the board left the door open for the group to acquire the property.

Conservancy officials have said they will delay selling the property to another bidder if at least 60% of property owners in an assessment district yet to be defined agree to pay for the acquisition, an idea the association is now pushing.

A professional polling organization, paid with funds provided by the association, is expected to survey Marquez Canyon-area residents in the near future to determine whether they would be willing to tax themselves to preserve the canyon.

If the survey shows that the residents are receptive to an assessment district, the conservancy board will allow Los Angeles officials 30 days to begin the process of setting up the tax district. If the city fails to take prompt action, the conservancy will sell the property, Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director, said.

An assessment expert retained by the preservation group this week told supporters of the tax district idea that the cost of buying the property and keeping it as open space would be less than $100 per household annually over 20 years for the 3,500 households nearest the canyon.

“It comes out closer to $80 if we’re talking about simply open space, and closer to $90 if you add a soccer field and restroom facilities,” Edmiston said. “We’re basically very pleased with the figures.”

The conservancy obtained the land last 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 property to the conservancy with the understanding that proceeds from the sale would reimburse the trust fund.

The arrangement angered Marquez Canyon residents, who complained that their canyon was being sacrificed to preserve another canyon 11 miles away.

Not wanting to be cast as the villain in a struggle between the neighbors of Marquez Canyon and would-be developers, the conservancy tried hard to accommodate a last-minute bid by the preservation group.

Bailey, the association’s president, offered $1.8 million for the property last August. She later acknowledged that she didn’t have the money, but her effort helped trigger a grass-roots effort to raise the funds.

After the association failed to meet an earlier deadline for coming up with the money, the conservancy gave it until last month. By then, the group had raised only $25,000, far short of the $350,000 deposit the conservancy board said was necessary to keep the bid afloat.

But in a last-ditch effort to demonstrate a willingness to work something out, the conservancy board, at the suggestion of Edmiston, approved delaying the sale for another month to give the association more time to explore the idea of a tax district.

The Village School, which made the only other offer besides Beck’s, had presented bids of $2 million and $1.6 million for the property during earlier rounds of bids that have been canceled.

In making its reduced offer of $1.4 million, a spokesman for the school, Lawrence D. Gilson, told conservancy officials that several things had diminished the property’s value in the last five months, adding, “The real estate market has continued to decline.”