Topanga Project Has a New Look; Critics Not So Sure : Development: Walt Disney’s daughter is the prime force behind plan to build 97 houses and a golf course.
The enthusiastic team of partners, designers and public relations consultants describe Canyon Oaks Estates as something completely different: fresh, innovative and, above all, environmentally sensitive.
They say the proposal to build 97 houses and a golf course in the Summit Valley area of Topanga Canyon reflects a far deeper appreciation for the natural terrain and more concern about community opinion than any of the previous development proposals for the land submitted over the past 14 years.
“I think we’ve demonstrated a willingness to listen,” said project manager Charles McLaughlin. “We’ve substantially reduced grading and re-vegetated the edges of the golf course so that the look and feel will be much like it is today.”
But those canyon residents who vehemently opposed an earlier quest to build houses and a golf course on the 257-acre property--dubbed the Montevideo Country Club--maintain that the most recent plan is merely Montevideo sugar-coated.
“The only thing environmentally sensitive about it is that they are going to re-landscape with native plants. Anybody can do that,” said Bob Bates, founding member of the Topanga Assn. for a Scenic Community, a group created in 1963 to preserve Topanga’s woodsy character.
The Montevideo project was sidetracked last year by a bankruptcy, but one of the former Montevideo partners, Sharon Lund, has assumed control of the property and has emerged as the prime mover behind Canyon Oaks. It has been one of the most contentious development battles in county history, prompting lawsuits, generating ill-will and involving more than 30 public hearings in its 14 fractious years.
An environmental impact study of Canyon Oaks will not be released until Los Angeles County planners have finished reviewing it. But on the surface, the arguments of both McLaughlin and Bates appear to have some merit.
* The number of houses--97-- is the same as was proposed in the final incarnation of Montevideo, which was rejected by county supervisors in April, 1991, and then, in a stunning about-face, was resurrected for reconsideration three months later. It was still pending when the bankruptcy occurred.
However, McLaughlin points out that Canyon Oaks’ 97 houses would be different from Montevideo’s. They would be less visible from the area’s only thoroughfare, Topanga Canyon Boulevard, because they are to be built farther from the road and are expected to be limited to just one or two stories.
* Grading of canyon hillsides and ridgelines is reduced slightly from the year-old Montevideo proposal, largely because of a more rolling and rugged golf course--3.29 million cubic yards of earth would be moved instead of 3.6 million.
But Bates and other opponents complain that such grading is still excessive. They also say that some of the statistics used during community presentations are misleading because they compare grading at Canyon Oaks to earlier, more ambitious versions of Montevideo, rather than to last summer’s scaled-down version.
(When the Montevideo project was first proposed in 1978, the developer hoped to include 224 houses, a hotel, shopping center, country club and equestrian center.)
* The fiery owner of the Montevideo property, Chris Wojciechowski, is out of the picture after he lost the land through bankruptcy to Lund, his former partner. Lund now heads the partnership that has created the new plan, presented at dozens of community meetings in recent months.
Yet, far from being happy about the departure of the outspoken and often gruff Wojciechowski, Topanga opponents view Lund--daughter of Walt Disney--as a far more formidable opponent because of her wealth and her political savvy.
“What we’re dealing with now is . . . people with very deep pockets, who have hired a public relations firm, who have enough sophistication to go that route,” said Susan Petrulas Nissman, the new chairwoman of the scenic community association.
Lund owns 30% of a company called Retlaw (“Walter” spelled backward), which was formed by Disney to provide a separate source of income for his family. Retlaw is now primarily a broadcasting and real estate enterprise estimated to be worth more than $150 million.
Lund hired the Public Affairs Consulting Group to work on Canyon Oaks. But representatives of the public relations firm say their job is not so much to sway public opinion as to gather information from the community and open channels of communication.
In addition to organizing more than 25 community presentations held so far this year, the firm has helped form committees of local residents to work with the developer on such sensitive subjects as architectural guidelines and trail preservation.
“Where we’ve seen an issue where the community has strong feelings, we’ve tried to bring community members together with our experts to work out a solution that is mutually acceptable,” said Robin Shine Ackerman, president of the public relations firm.
Other responses to past criticisms about the project’s effect on the environment are a plan to transplant more than 100 mature oak trees to other locations on the property, instead of merely uprooting them, and to use less toxic chemicals on the golf course. But opponents said neither of those concessions go far enough.
“With the oak trees, especially, that’s so experimental,” Nissman said. “Who’s going to be around in 100 years to see whether that 400-year-old tree died in 100 years or lived the 300 years it would’ve lived if it hadn’t been moved.”
Canyon Oaks representatives hope to receive consideration by the Board of Supervisors by early fall.
Neighbors, on the other hand, are hopeful that the project will not come before supervisors until after December, when Supervisor Kenneth Hahn--who last year switched his previous no-vote to allow reconsideration of Montevideo--leaves office. Hahn is retiring and his replacement will be chosen in a November runoff.
