Supervisors to Revoke Permit of Raucous Recreation Club : Santa Monica Mountains: Neighbors contend the facility is now just a noisy hangout for motorcyclists.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Thursday began the process of revoking the operating permit of a Santa Monica Mountains recreation club, siding with neighbors who say the former tennis camp has become a noisy motorcyclists’ hangout.

The board unanimously asked the county counsel to draft an order revoking the permit on the grounds that the club, located in the mountains between Agoura Hills and Malibu, is no longer the same operation that opened in the 1950s and was granted a permit to expand in 1973.

“We had one situation that was occurring there and it’s changed over the years . . . dramatically,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents the area.

The revocation order will be returned to the board within two months and, once approved, will take effect immediately.

In June, after neighbors’ complaints, club owner Joseph Teresi changed its name from the “Malibu Mountains Racquet Club” to the “Malibu Mountains Hog Ranch”--in honor both of Harley-Davidson riders and “attack pigs” that he said he was raising on the grounds.

In preparation for a July 4 grand opening of the newly named club, Teresi had some of the tennis courts converted into chicken coops. He said he also was considering turning the swimming pool into a trout pond.

Edelman said Thursday’s board action would not bar Teresi, a publisher of motorcycle and hot rod magazines, from reapplying for a permit to run a motorcycle club.

However, Teresi’s attorney, Tamar Stein, described the revocation as “a miscarriage of justice” and said Teresi probably will sue the county rather than ask for a new permit.

During the hearing, Stein and Teresi maintained that the original conditional use permit was very general, allowing recreation at the site and mentioning tennis only as an example of one form of recreation likely to occur there. They also insisted that tennis is still played there on the one reconstructed court.

“There are people who ride motorcycles who also play tennis, who also swim in pools, who also play volleyball,” Teresi said, adding that he felt neighbors had unfairly and inaccurately painted “a picture of Hells Angels and outlaw bikers.”

Neighbors of the club first brought their concerns to the county Planning Commission last spring, complaining that their previously quiet and rural lives were being disrupted by the club’s noisy motorcycles and rude members.

They said the motorcycles frightened their horses and their children and that traffic to and from the club had become unbearable on some weekends.

The Planning Commission voted in April to revoke Teresi’s permit. However, county attorneys agreed that the club could continue its operations until the issue was decided by the Board of Supervisors.