L.A. Council to Sue Over Ahmanson Development : Litigation: The decision comes at the request of Councilwoman Picus. She says she is concerned about traffic.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday directed its attorneys to file a lawsuit challenging the massive Ahmanson Ranch housing project in neighboring Ventura County, becoming the third government entity to initiate legal action against the proposed development.

The city of Calabasas and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors also have authorized lawsuits against the Ahmanson Land Co. project to build 3,050 houses on a former sheep ranch in the Simi Hills.

Wednesday’s action approving a city lawsuit challenging conclusions that the project would have little effect on traffic in Los Angeles County came at the request of Councilwoman Joy Picus.

Picus said her goal is to prevent a major roadway--traversing the project to connect Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Calabasas to Victory Boulevard in West Hills--from being used by commuters seeking an alternative to the Ventura Freeway.

The councilwoman and her staff met Monday with Ahmanson President Donald Brackenbush to propose that through traffic be prevented from using the roadway by gating the new community and restricting traffic to residents and others with business there.

“A gate would solve the problem for me,” Picus said Wednesday. “If we get the gate, we’d drop the lawsuit.”

Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk said she believes that the city of Los Angeles probably decided to file suit for the same reasons that Los Angeles County and the city of Calabasas did--in “an effort to get as much as they can from Ahmanson and in the way of mitigations to their problems.”

But VanderKolk called Los Angeles hypocritical in filing suit because of its past approval of the sprawling Porter Ranch development near Simi Valley.

“I think Los Angeles city is of all of them the most hypocritical because of Porter Ranch.” She said the traffic effects from Porter Ranch were five times greater than the predicted effect of traffic from the Ahmanson project.

“There was no effort by the city of Los Angeles to mitigate traffic to Simi Valley,” VanderKolk said. “Ahmanson has already done more for Los Angeles than Los Angeles has ever done for us.”

On Dec. 15, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved the Ahmanson project, including an environmental impact report that maintained that the controversial connector road would generate only about 3,000 through-traffic trips per day.

The through-traffic problem “is a non-event,” Brackenbush told reporters Wednesday as he waited with Ahmanson Vice Chairman Bob DeKruif for the City Council to finish its closed-door review of Picus’ lawsuit proposal.

But city transportation experts disagree. “Our Department of Transportation thinks Ahmanson has way, way underestimated this and that’s what our own gut tells us too,” said Rita Schneir, a Picus deputy.

The lawsuit, Schneir said, is needed “to keep Ahmanson at the table--we’ve had talks but no signed agreement yet, and that’s what we’re looking at.”

Picus said relations with Ahmanson are not hostile and that she hopes that future negotiating talks--possibly convened by Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman with the developer--will resolve the dispute.

But Brackenbush said that while his company is not opposed to gating the project, the details of who would be allowed to enter the project and who would act as gatekeeper would be complicated.

Moreover, the Los Angeles County Board of Public Works actually wants the connector road to be used by through traffic, Brackenbush said. Such a link has long been part of the county’s master plan for roadway improvements, he said.

In his remarks to the council Wednesday, DeKruif urged that no lawsuit be filed. “We’re hoping you’d see the tremendous value of the project and that we can work out our problems” without litigation, he said.

As part of the project’s approval, more than 10,000 acres of Ahmanson Ranch land is to be sold as parkland to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for a below-market price of $29.5 million. If the lawsuits filed against it cannot be resolved, it could jeopardize the viability of the project and of the parkland sale, Brackenbush has warned.

Times correspondent Patrick McCartney contributed to this story.