Board OKs Tycoon’s Golf Course Plan : Development: The approval of the Farmont Corp. project climaxes five years of wrangling.

The long and contentious battle over a Japanese media tycoon’s dream of building an exclusive golf course in the Ojai Valley ended Tuesday when the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the project.

The board’s vote allows construction of a 204-acre development that will include a golf course, a 19,000-square-foot clubhouse and restaurant, three lakes and a driving range next to the Rancho Matilija subdivision near California 150.

The decision was the culmination of more than five years of wrangling between a group of environmentalists and homeowners and multimillionaire radio station owner Kagehisa Toyama’s Farmont Corp.

In 1987, the board rejected a proposal for a larger development on the 1,900 acres that Toyama owns in the western Ojai Valley. Since then, it has undergone three significant design reviews.

To help win approval for the current development, the Farmont Corp. agreed to donate almost 1,500 acres of open space adjoining the proposed golf course to the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy. The conservancy will preserve the land as permanent open space.

Tuesday’s board action came after two environmental groups, Citizens Against the Ojai and the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County, challenged the approval of the project by the county Planning Commission. Without the challenge, the commission’s decision would have been final.

Before casting their votes, Supervisors Maria VanderKolk and Susan Lacey compelled Farmont Corp. attorney Lindsay Nielson to agree to several last-minute concessions, including using reclaimed water in the future and holding two charity golf events per year.

“I believe this is the most benign way to develop the area,” said Lacey after the nearly four-hour public hearing.

Nielson, who called the five-year battle “an Orwellian process, a mind-numbing procedure which just hemorrhages money,” was conciliatory after the vote.

“I’d like to give the appellant their due,” Nielson said. “They have been dogged, and because of that, I think it is a better project.”

Environmentalists were more guarded.

“The project definitely moved in the right direction today,” said Alasdair Coyne, president of the Environmental Coalition. “Before the last-minute concessions, I had the distinct feeling that our concerns were being ignored.

“Things happened so quickly at the end that I really need to study what happened because I’m not sure if the motion covered all the questions I have.”

In their appeal, the two environmental groups contended that the project would create traffic snarls on California 33 and unlawfully use drinking water from the Ventura River to irrigate the golf course.

Those concerns were at least partly addressed Tuesday when the Farmont Corp. agreed to assist in a traffic study of area roads and to use recycled water for the golf course once a reliable supply becomes available.

Until that time, the company has pledged to limit water use to 417 acre-feet annually. It has ceded its right to an additional 1,483 acre-feet of Ventura River water per year to the Meiners Oaks Water District and Ventura River Water District.

But while environmentalists and Farmont officials were preoccupied with water-use issues and traffic concerns, many of the nearly 50 speakers said the bottom line was in the number of jobs the development would provide.

“A lot of people are saying that this project will make the roads too crowded,” said Bruce Rolands, an Ojai resident for 26 years. “But the lack of jobs in the valley is actually what makes the roads crowded.

“I don’t think we should vote for this for the sake of pristineness. Pristineness is nice, but it doesn’t put food on the table.”

BACKGROUND

Multimillionaire radio station owner Kagehisa Toyama first proposed an 18-hole private golf course, a 50,000-square-foot clubhouse and two dozen bungalows for his 1,900-acre parcel in the Ojai Valley in 1987. When the Board of Supervisors rejected it, calling it an inappropriate use of the land, which was zoned as open space, Toyama went back to the drawing board. After three redesigns and the donation of about 1,500 acres to the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, a scaled-down project finally won unanimous approval Tuesday.