Ousted Christmas Tree Vendor Returns to Pierce Lot

Sleigh bells ring, children sing, and all is merry and bright once again at the corner of Victory Boulevard and De Soto Avenue.

After a year’s absence, urban farmer Joe Cicero--a man almost as familiar as jolly old St. Nick to many San Fernando Valley residents--is back on the Woodland Hills corner selling Christmas trees and offering sleigh rides to children.

His one-time competitor, Christmas tree magnate Stu Miller, is nowhere to be seen--at least not in the immediate vicinity.

Thus, apparently, ends the war between the Christmas tree sellers that had been raging since 1989.

“We won,” said a jubilant Cicero, who recently signed a new three-year contract with Pierce College, from which he leases the land where he grows crops in the summer and sells trees at Christmastime. “We’re back in business. It feels good not to have all that pressure.”

The forces of the Miller company, a power in Christmas tree circles, sounded as if they had surrendered.

“We’re done with that,” said Jim Spark, a vice president of Miller & Sons Christmas Trees. “We’re not selling trees on that corner this year.”

The company has 30 other lots elsewhere in Valley, Spark noted, and more elsewhere in the state.

The war between the tree vendors started three years ago when Miller & Sons employees stood near Cicero’s stand and passed out flyers advertising their own lot across the street. Miller said at the time that he believed that potential customers mistakenly thought that they were supporting the college by buying a tree from his competitor.

Then, shortly before the holiday season in 1990, Miller filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District. Citing a state law regulating commercial enterprises on government land, he charged that Cicero’s tree sales were illegal because other tree merchants had not been given a chance to bid on the publicly owned 25 acres that Cicero had farmed since 1985.

A blizzard of legal maneuvers followed, and news coverage turned the dispute into a running local Christmas saga. In response to pressure from Miller, the district sued Cicero because his contract did not specify that he could sell trees--only the fruits and vegetables he grew on the property.

Twice, judges ordered Cicero to close his lot. And twice, other judges reversed those orders. Five days before Christmas in 1990, Cicero got permission from an appellate court to reopen.

“We were opening and closing so much the hinges almost fell off the gate,” Cicero said this weekend.

But in 1991, Cicero was forced to sit out the year while a court-appointed arbitrator decided the lawsuit and the college district put the lease on the property out for bids.

Cicero moved off the property in the fall of last year, when his lease expired. At that time, college district officials informed Cicero that his lease would not be renewed and that the district would not immediately solicit new bids on the property.

Cicero, whose family has farmed in the Valley for more than 40 years--most notably a corn field in the Sepulveda Basin that was a Valley fixture for many years--thought that it was the end of his produce stand at Victory and De Soto. He said he was surprised and baffled by the district’s action, which he called “totally unfair.”

The farmer said he had started looking for greener pastures and even considered moving “upstate to Sacramento.”

Countless Valley residents whose parents had taken them to Cicero’s farms to ride ponies, pet baby goats, wander around the pumpkin patch at Halloween or go on winter hayrides went to bat for Cicero, barraging college officials with telephone calls and letters.

“There were thousands of people going to demonstrate one day” until Cicero got a short reprieve, Pierce President Lowell Erickson said.

Children at nearby Pinecrest School sent Cicero a chocolate cake decorated with pumpkins that said: “Not Goodbye but Good Luck.”

Gary Mason of West Hills said his son cried when he learned that his family would not be able to visit the farm last Christmas. Others mourned the Valley’s disappearing agricultural history. Some were certain that a developer was behind the whole thing.

“I’m very upset about this,” Mason said. “We don’t need any more damn buildings in the Valley.”

Erickson, then the new president at Pierce, relented and allowed Cicero to stay on the land a month after his lease expired Oct. 31 so that he could harvest and sell his crops. Erickson readily admitted that the public outcry played a role in his decision.

Nonetheless, Erickson stood firm on the Christmas tree sales prohibition in 1991 and Cicero moved off the property in November.

A few weeks later, Erickson and district officials had a change of heart about the property’s use. Early this year, the district announced that administrators would accept bids for a new contract. Cicero won and moved back in May--barely giving him time to harvest a few crops.

Stu Miller, who had announced that he wanted to compete for the lease, did not submit a bid.

“They wrote the contract so that someone who did not intend to farm the land could not bid on it,” Spark said.

But he added that his company is satisfied because the college district did put the contract out to bid. “We have no problems with that,” Spark said.

Erickson said the college wanted a tenant who would allow the school to use his farming equipment, as well as assist the school’s agricultural program--services Cicero provides.

“He can do his hayrides and everything,” he said. “We also specified Christmas trees in the contract.”

Under the contract, the farmer will pay the college $20,000 a year to lease the land.

As for the lawsuit, it’s finally over. A Superior Court arbitrator ruled Nov. 5 that neither Miller nor Cicero was at fault and ordered Cicero to pay the district $4,400, a share of Cicero’s tree sales profits for 1990.

“There are no grounds for anyone to sue anyone now,” said Fausto Capobianco, spokesman for the college district.

At week’s end, Cicero and his 35 employees were busy at the corner, unloading thousands of trees from Oregon. A llama stood ready for petting and Cicero said he was borrowing a reindeer to keep the llama company.

The farmer was also preparing to offer his popular sleigh rides for children.

Workers had erected a brightly lit sleigh route leading to a small Santa’s village behind the tree lot. A worker dressed as an elf drives the sleigh as Santa sits in the back with the children, Cicero explained. And, naturally, there are bells on the sleigh.

“Kids like that,” he said. “Our thing is not just to throw trees on a lot and sell them. This is a family lot. You don’t see kids on many other lots. This is for families.”

And he said he is happy that the court battle is over.

“Litigation,” Cicero said. “That’s a big word for a farmer to say.”