TOPANGA : State Returns Signs Protesting Project

Caltrans workers have removed about 100 homemade signs from Topanga Canyon Boulevard but returned them after community members tracked the placards to a Caltrans storage site.

“We got over a 100 complaints from as far away as Santa Barbara,” Dennis Cutting, a state Department of Transportation maintenance supervisor, said Thursday about the signs, which were posted to protest a proposed housing development. “So we took them down.”

The plywood signs came in all different sizes and had dotted the road from Mulholland Drive to Pacific Coast Highway. Because the project involves funding connected to the Walt Disney family, the signs read “Please don’t Mickey Mouse around with our canyon,” “We don’t need Di$ney here” and “The night we drove Ol’ Disney down.”

They were placed to protest the proposed Canyon Oaks Estates housing development in Topanga, which would include a private golf course and 97 custom home sites on 257 acres at the top of Topanga Canyon, about three miles south of the Ventura Freeway. The project is funded by the trust fund of the late Sharon Disney Lund, daughter of the late Walt Disney.

The project “has really triggered artistic Angst,” said Colin Penno, editor of the Topanga Messenger, a local newspaper. “At first, it was three or four (protest signs), then more went up.”

Russell Snyder, a Caltrans spokesman, said the signs were taken down because they were on state property.

“They will continue to be removed if they are put on the state right of way,” he said.

Signs cannot be placed on state property unless an encroachment permit is obtained, but Snyder said residents can place the signs on private property.

Rebecca Barkin, a 14-year resident of Topanga, said a friend with a cellular phone called from the Caltrans storage lot near Castellammare Drive to report sighting the infamous signs, and she sped over to see if she could retrieve them.

“It was a really funny sight,” Barkin said. “The workers were putting them out carefully because I think they respected what the canyon families are standing for.”

Barkin said the signs were a way for Topangans to express their feelings about the impending housing project and will probably go back up this weekend.

A few signs were made by children, such as Barkin’s 11-year-old son, Zack, at Topanga School to give them an outlet for their feelings.

“We tried to think up ways that the kids could have their say (about the project),” Barkin said. “After all, it is our children who aren’t going to have the open space.”