Agencies Join Forces for Next Growth Spurt : Development: Government entities want to ensure that new projects along a stretch of the Ventura Freeway are carefully mapped out and have adequate infrastructure.

For nearly two decades, planners responsible for managing growth along 15 miles of the Ventura Freeway in western Los Angeles County have seemed to be playing catch-up.

Development in the scenic hills and valleys that have been the backdrop for numerous western movies was accelerating four times faster than in the rest of the county, and local officials in charge of building schools, roads, water lines and other public utilities were left scrambling.

The result was a patchwork infrastructure. Roads and off-ramps were bent around private property. Homes were sometimes left at the end of long water lines--a potential hazard during a fire because it causes low water pressure. And many children attended class in temporary buildings while the area’s Las Virgenes Unified School District struggled to erect permanent ones.

Now, with the growth boom that began during the mid-1970s stalled in a recessionary lull, local officials are taking a collective deep breath and trying to prepare for the next possible onslaught.

In an unusual show of regional cooperation, planners from Los Angeles County, the cities of Hidden Hills, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Calabasas, the Las Virgenes school and water districts and the National Park Service will work jointly to guide everything from road and sewer construction to the protection of endangered animals.

None of the governing agencies will be required to follow the non-binding Ventura Freeway Areawide Plan, but it will function as an informal pact between them, said county Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents the area.

“Obviously, we can’t take away the home-rule planning function of any jurisdiction, but what this does is it gets each city to buy into what’s happening in the whole area,” Edelman said.

The centerpiece of the plan will be a map designating parcels appropriate for commercial, industrial and residential development between the city of Los Angeles and Ventura County, as well as land that should be left as open space.

Some areas on the map may be as small as a city block and others may be as large as hundreds of acres, said Lloyd Zola, president of Rancho Cucamonga-based Planning Network, which was hired to develop the plan.

“This will be the first time the cities and the other people involved will get a good look at what all their actions look like as a whole,” Zola said. “They will probably see clearly what they knew all along: that an action taken in a small area affects a much wider area around it.”

Each draft of the document probably will become the subject of intense lobbying, as homeowners attempt to win environmental protections for their neighborhoods and landowners seek to have their parcels deemed appropriate for high-density development.

“We may get embroiled in all kinds of squabbles between one property and the next if we’re not careful,” said Lee Stark, a planner with the county Regional Planning Commission. “We’re going to try to minimize that sort of thing. But we need to outline the ground rules, so that there are no surprises. So when people move into an area or buy a property, they’ll know how it is envisioned.”

In an effort to create a forum for public suggestions, representatives from each city and agency will choose a panel of 20 to 30 citizens, who will help shape the plan alongside the technical advisers and the eight-member Policy Committee, according to an outline of the two-year drafting process.

A key element of the plan will be new estimates for population growth in the area, expected this fall from the Southern California Assn. of Governments. The new estimates are expected to project much slower growth, partly due to the building slowdown and new restrictions on development imposed by cities, than those produced in 1988.

Based on the 1988 estimates, the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District expected its customer base to double by the year 2030. That would have required the agency to spend tens of millions of dollars to enlarge its sewer system and upgrade its treatment plant.

“In some ways, we’ve been in a holding pattern, waiting for updated numbers,” said Gene Talmadge, senior planner for the water district. “Of course, we’ve had to go ahead with many projects. But we’ve been doing a lot of reacting.”

In fact, the water and school districts, which roughly coincide with the plan’s study area, were the prime movers behind the collective planning effort.

“We would like to some day have the ability to make sure that a school is ready before the children are there, not the other way around,” said Don Zimring, district assistant superintendent. “That hasn’t always happened.”

County planners tried to get a grip on development in 1981, with a zoning map designed to limit construction on some parcels. But dozens of exceptions were granted, and condominiums were built in areas where ranch homes were planned and shopping centers sprouted in what should have been protected as open spaces.

Angry over what they viewed as overdevelopment, residents in Agoura Hills and Calabasas voted to incorporate and set up their own zoning rules. Westlake Village had already incorporated in 1981, and planning between the county and the cities became increasingly Balkanized.

“In the past, the county has been knocked because we’ve been identified as approving any kind of development,” Edelman said. Now, he said, he and other county officials want to work with their local counterparts as equals.

That may be little consolation to residents of the flat land on both sides of the Ventura Freeway. Most of the open space there has been either built on or approved for development.

But much of the hillside area between the freeway and the coastal region is still pristine, giving planners another shot at creating a blueprint for development.

And as the population continues to grow, local officials will be forced to deal with issues that affect everyone living in the region, such as how to carve an alternate east-west route through the tangle of buildings and roads near the freeway.

“What this planning process does as much as anything is open the avenues of communication, so we can all sit down and begin talking about this place as a whole,” said Agoura Hills City Councilwoman Fran Pavley. “It’s too bad it didn’t happen 10 or 15 years ago. A lot of mistakes were made. But, hopefully, it’s not too late to learn from them.”

Freeway Area Plan

Officials are planning future sites for housing, shopping centers, schools and open space along a 15-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway. For more than a decade, the area has grown four times faster than the rest of Los Angeles County.