SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS : Festival Planned for Ranchland Deal

A festival Sunday will celebrate public acquisition of the remainder of Paramount Ranch in Agoura, the former Renaissance Pleasure Faire site.

Featuring a Chumash Indian ceremony and English folk dancing in the morning, the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. event will be a grand opening of the 314-acre portion of the ranch that had been slated for development.

It will be reunited with the adjacent 436 acres of the old Paramount movie ranch that the National Park Service operates as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Sponsors of the festival, including the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group, are asking a minimum donation of $5 to fund maintenance of the property.

The event is also meant to rally public support for federal funding to remove a lingering threat that the land will be developed.

The 314 acres currently are controlled by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, but the agency’s hold on the property is tenuous.

The conservancy earlier this year acquired delinquent loans on the property from an Orange County bank and foreclosed on the developers who were in arrears.

However, the conservancy must come up with $17.6 million by October to complete purchase of the property, or risk foreclosure itself.

Environmentalists and park officials hope the next appropriation of funds for the national recreation area will provide the funds, although a congressional subcommittee recently proposed $14 million for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

If federal funds become available, the National Park Service would probably buy out the conservancy and manage the tract with its neighboring land as a single 750-acre activity site.