Calabasas Council OKs Luxury Housing Project

The Calabasas City Council has given final approval to construction of a luxury housing project that residents reluctantly supported because it holds the promise of curtailing further development in the Santa Monica Mountains.

But environmentalists repeated their long-standing complaints that Micor Ventures’ Enclave project will destroy sensitive natural habitat when its 250 homes are built on 938 acres east of Las Virgenes Road.

“This plan is awful. I don’t see how you can take this position and then get upset over Ahmanson and Soka,” Siegfried Othmer of the group Save Open Space said, referring to two other development proposals outside the city’s boundaries. “It is inconsistent.”

Othmer’s group is suing the city over the project, claiming that it did not follow proper procedures when it gave the project preliminary approval in April.

At a meeting Wednesday night, the council took three actions Micor needed--approving its tract map, granting a permit to rip out or damage 464 oak trees and entering into a development agreement that guarantees the developer that future local growth-control ordinances will not affect the project, in exchange for about $1.7 million in public improvements.

Micor’s project has been praised by City Council members because it is designed to protect the natural habitat and some 600 acres will be dedicated as permanent open space. But some residents and council members also believe the project indirectly can slow growth in the Santa Monica Mountains--and especially that it could limit Soka University’s proposed expansion.

On Sept. 9, the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission allowed Calabasas to annex the land on which the Enclave project is to be built. Under the annexation agreement, the city gained control of a stretch of Las Virgenes Road, the main link between Calabasas and Malibu and a major access road to the Santa Monica Mountains.

As a result, any request to widen or improve Las Virgenes--now a two lane road--to provide better access to the mountains must come before the Calabasas council. And council members have said they would veto any such proposals, which they hope would block any development that depended on improving the road.

“The victory was achieved at great cost--a development three times over the Area Plan density, which we did not support, and the loss of a biologically significant canyon,” according to the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation’s monthly newsletter.