AGOURA : Decision on Housing Project Is Delayed

A county planning panel decided Wednesday to delay for a month a long-awaited decision on an Agoura housing project proposed for a sensitive ecological area in the hills near Calabasas.

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission put off a decision on the Malibu Terrace housing project until after a Nov. 9 field trip by the commission to the project site. The panel will then meet Dec. 1 to make a final decision.

As now proposed, the development plans call for construction of 110 single-family houses and a 4.5-acre commercial project on about 500 acres within one of the county’s Significant Ecological Areas, which were identified in 1980 to preserve what remains of the county’s diverse natural environment.

Over the last three years, the proposed number of houses in the project has been drastically reduced in response to concerns from residents, environmentalists and elected officials, who say the project will damage the sensitive ecological area.

Originally, the project called for 1,700 apartments, 116 houses and 60,000 square feet of commercial development.

Despite being scaled back, the project continued to receive harsh criticism Wednesday from representatives of the city of Calabasas and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, who said the scaled-back project would still ruin sensitive land and create traffic problems in adjacent neighborhoods.