Consultants Working for Free to Mediate Land-Use Dispute : Thousand Oaks: Forgoing $60,000 in fees, the firm is drafting a fresh development plan for the 47-acre site.

Environmental consultant David Armanetti had an inkling he was in for a lot of work when he stepped in to mediate a longstanding dispute involving a developer, the city of Thousand Oaks and residents of Newbury Park.

Nonetheless, he volunteered for the job--literally.

Forgoing $60,000 in consulting fees, Armanetti and his colleagues at Envicom Corp. are working for free to draft a fresh development plan for a 47-acre parcel south of Reino Road and Kimber Drive.

They hope to present a proposal next week that will satisfy both developer Nedjatollah Cohan, who envisions townhouses and a strip mall on the land, and area residents, who reject commercial construction and multifamily dwellings as inappropriate for the neighborhood.

Sifting through each side’s demands and assembling a compromise has taken more than 250 hours so far. Although he sometimes rues his impulse to take on the pro bono work, Armanetti said he is convinced only Envicom can break the impasse that has blocked construction on the plot for several years.

“It would have slid into litigation, and that was kind of sad,” Armanetti said. “Once in a while, you have to give something back to the community. A thousand points of light and all that.”

Because Envicom has worked with both Cohan and Thousand Oaks in the past, it could mediate as an impartial party “credible to all,” said the firm’s president, Joseph Johns, who has lived in Thousand Oaks since 1964. The Agoura Hills firm will not fish for additional work with Cohan if his project is approved, Johns said.

After some skepticism, both sides accepted Envicom’s offer to mediate.

“My initial response was, ‘Why are they doing it? “‘ Councilman Frank Schillo said. “Nobody does things for free. But this was truly a (philanthropic) offer.”

Cohan has also agreed to consider Envicom’s proposals. In a goodwill gesture, he said he also will delay any further action in a lawsuit challenging the City Council’s rejection last July of his project.

“We’re not building the project so we can drive by and look at it--we want to lease it and sell it,” said Albert Cohen, Nedjatollah Cohan’s son, who changed the spelling of his family name. “If they can come up with a project that makes the public, the Cohans, the city and the attorneys all happy, then why not do it?”

Disregarding the millions of dollars Cohan has spent in architectural fees and feasibility studies, Armanetti declared the property a blank slate when he began work.

Armed with magic markers and blank maps, he held a community meeting in Newbury Park last month to listen to neighbors’ concerns and encourage them to draw up their vision of what the triangular parcel should look like. Their ideas inspired his own planning.

This topsy-turvy approach bucked conventional wisdom--usually, planners draw up detailed plans and only later address the community, presenting the proposal as more or less a done deal.

So far, the concept, which Envicom has been using for 20 years throughout Southern California, has won rave reviews in Thousand Oaks.

“It should be done this way all the time,” said Diane Doria, president of the Newbury Park Civic Organization. “I’d like to see this as a permanent reversal of the city’s process: getting a developer to meet with a nonpartisan person in the middle and listen to the community.”

Although the city doesn’t plan to overhaul its planning process, Thousand Oaks is trying to solicit public involvement early, before developers start putting their ideas on paper, City Manager Grant Brimhall said. In that spirit, Mayor Judy Lazar will host a public brainstorming session on new recreational facilities Feb. 23.

“In this day and age, the parcels that remain to be developed are the most difficult pieces of land, and they tend to be the most controversial because there are established neighborhoods around them and various environmental constraints,” said Greg Smith, a senior planner for Thousand Oaks.

“So traditional planning methods may not in every case be effective,” he added. “Envicom has confidence in the ability of the community to make decisions and be constructive.”