Ahmanson Adds Low-Rent Units to Plan : Development: County officials persuaded the builder to include in its upscale project the 500 dwellings that would accommodate low-wage workers. Some observers have concerns.

In the latest twist in the planning of Ventura County’s most controversial housing project, developers are proposing to add 500 low-cost rental units to the upscale Ahmanson Ranch community.

At the request of county officials, Ahmanson Land Co. plans to add 300 “granny” flats, a 50-room boardinghouse and a 150-apartment public housing project to the 2,600 dwellings already proposed for the sprawling east county cattle ranch.

The revised project would mix million-dollar country club estates with dwellings for low-wage employees who would work in the town’s business center and at its Professional Golfers’ Assn. resort.

Rents for the 500 new units would be controlled by county law. So would the rents and prices for 324 lower-income apartments and condominiums already in the plan.

The rent and resale restrictions--proposed for 27% of all dwellings--would be the first in Ventura County outside of government housing and mobile home parks, officials said.

“It’s a little different from the way we started five years ago, isn’t it?” said Donald Brackenbush, president of Ahmanson Land Co.

“But, I’ll tell you, I think I’ve gotten on the county’s wavelength,” Brackenbush said. “The logic is that we have housing for every employee in the community. It is such a solid planning tenet that I think it will work to our benefit. So we didn’t really resist it.”

County planners said they suggested more affordable housing so the Ahmanson development would function as a self-supporting town, not as a luxury resort and affluent bedroom community. That will reduce traffic and smog.

“We are interested in an old-fashioned village concept, where everyone has the opportunity to live in the community where they work,” planner Dennis Hawkins said.

An estimated 1,766 jobs would be created at the ranch, most of them at a 300-room hotel and two golf courses and in stores and offices occupying 400,000 square feet. Two schools, fire and sheriff’s stations, a post office and a library also are planned.

About 57% of the 1,100 dwellings needed for town workers would have to be classified as low-income or affordable to match the wages of the lesser-paid workers, Hawkins said.

Despite the advantages of more affordable housing, some supporters say the giant Ahmanson Ranch project--highly complicated when introduced in 1987--is now so full of trade-offs and add-ons that they have trouble making sense of its changing parts.

County Supervisor John K. Flynn said he thinks the latest switch may be one too many.

“We need more low-income housing, but if we keep messing around with this concept, then everything is going to fly loose,” Flynn said.

A majority of the Board of Supervisors--Vicky Howard, Maria VanderKolk and Maggie Erickson Kildee--said more affordable housing is a plus. VanderKolk and Howard sit on a county committee that advises Ahmanson on its project.

“It’s a real complicated matter, and there are a lot of things pulling at us,” VanderKolk said. “But we thought it was important to address this need for affordable housing.”

The current proposal would combine 1,850 dwellings Ahmanson had planned with 750 houses once proposed at comic Bob Hope’s nearby Jordan Ranch and the 500 low-cost units.

The supervisors have supported consolidating the Ahmanson and Jordan projects at a single location because the deal would turn over about 10,000 acres of parkland to state and federal agencies. Hope would be paid $29.5 million for his share of the land.

The chief opponent of the Ahmanson project said last week that changes in the two-volume final plan Ahmanson submitted last week are insignificant.

“They’re adding affordable housing to a project that is already an environmental catastrophe,” said Mary Wiesbrock, director of the Agoura Hills-based environmental group Save Open Space. “It’s like trying to put nice buttons on a dress that doesn’t fit.”

Wiesbrock said the project will funnel tens of thousands of cars a day onto Victory Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway, contributing to future gridlock. And it will foul the air in the Simi Hills, a mountain range that has served as a green buffer between the San Fernando Valley and the cities of Ventura County, she said.

Wiesbrock said she is also concerned that Ventura County officials have become increasingly involved in shaping a project on which they still must vote.

Last summer, VanderKolk suggested clustering the Ahmanson and Jordan projects at one location. And, after developers agreed, the full board approved an unusual, speedy review of the consolidated development in December.

A county study of environmental consequences of the project will not be completed for at least two months, and a vote by the Board of Supervisors is not expected until midsummer.

“I think everyone now is assuming this is a done deal,” said Siegfried Othmer, an SOS board member. “This environmental review process is like that scene in ‘Casablanca’: We’ll go out and ‘round up the usual suspects’ . . . and then forget it.”

Ahmanson’s new low-cost housing wrinkle is so unusual it has caught the attention of professional planners not involved with it.

While it is fairly common for developers to set aside a small share of housing as low-income, it is rare for a builder to embrace rent control, and public housing in suburban projects, planner William Fulton of Ventura said.

“All that weird stuff is more commonly seen in an urban setting,” said Fulton, author of a book on California planning. “You don’t see many boardinghouses at Indian Wells.”

Fulton cautioned, however, against believing that the Ahmanson project will be built as now proposed.

“At this point, Ahmanson development is willing to say almost anything to get the project through, and they’re making a commitment to a lot of nifty social ideas,” Fulton said.

But in other new communities, plans approved in the original agreements have often changed, Fulton said.

“Nobody knows better than developers that you can renegotiate development agreements based on changing market conditions,” he said. “And it is very common for the people who move into the first half of a project to organize to stop the second half from being built.

“I can guarantee you that the political agenda is going to be to prevent the construction of as much of that (low-cost) stuff as possible,” he said.

Brackenbush and county planners said, however, that the Ahmanson project is designed so low-cost housing will be built as jobs in the community are created.

“One thing we are very concerned about is the issue of phasing, so we don’t get the project chopped up into 10 phases and the affordable housing units in the 10th,” county Planning Director Keith Turner said.

Brackenbush said that concern is unfounded.

“The jobs are seen coming along early in the program,” he said. “And we will build the commercial facilities in lock-step with the affordable (housing) program.”

For example, the tournament golf course, which would be one of only 15 in the nation owned by the PGA, is to be built in the first phase, and offices and stores would be constructed as the community grows, Ahmanson Vice President Guy Gniadek said.

Brackenbush said he does not think low-cost housing will create a problem for Ahmanson, since the project has always included a wide range of dwellings, from $140,000 condos to $1-million estates. Though 800 dwellings would be estates, the average cost per house would be about $260,000, he said.

Nor does the builder think that the 700-square-foot granny flats would make properties less salable. The flats--cottages that could be rented to family members or low-income workers--would be built on the grounds of 300 larger homes.

“The first granny flats I remember seeing are in Beverly Hills and Hancock Park. And they’re common form in Santa Barbara,” Brackenbush said. “It becomes a part of the accepted community fabric. So financially, it’s a non-event.”

Brackenbush could not say precisely when the boardinghouse, which would be clustered near the town center along with apartments and condominiums, would be built.

As for the public housing, Ahmanson has agreed to deed two three-acre parcels adjacent to separate community parks to the Area Housing Authority of Ventura County. That nonprofit group could build up to 150 apartments.

About one-third of the 824 affordable dwellings would be reserved for very low income residents--those who make less than 50% of the county’s $48,400 annual household median. Rents would be $300 to $400 a month, Brackenbush said.

Another third would be for residents who make 50% to 80% of the median income. Rents would be $400 to $600.

Prices for the remaining third, categorized as affordable condominiums, would be between $100,000 and $160,000, Brackenbush said. Sales would be limited to buyers with moderate incomes, 80% to 120% of the county median.

The extra low- and moderate-cost dwellings would move Ventura County much closer to its goal of having a balanced housing market, county analyst Marty Shaw-Halloway said.

Guidelines require construction of 1,458 more low- and moderate-cost dwellings in unincorporated county areas, she said. And Ahmanson agreed to help the county out.

“We said we feel there may be some difficulty from the state if we don’t deal with this problem, so what part of it can you help us with?” Shaw-Halloway said.