Children Protest at Disney Studio : Land: Topanga Canyon group opposes proposed development. But company’s link to plan is called remote at best.

Dozens of Topanga Canyon schoolchildren and their parents took up placards Tuesday and marched outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank to protest a luxury housing project and golf course proposed for their rural community.

Problem was, they were in the wrong place.

“Disney has nothing to do with the project,” said Bob Wilson, president of the partnership proposing the project called Canyon Oaks Estates.

A more accurate target for the 50 or so placard-waving junior activists would have been a nondescript office building in North Hollywood--not under the ersatz palm trees and gargantuan statuary dwarfs that grace the Walt Disney Co.’s Burbank headquarters.

Some of the adult protesters acknowledged that the Disney connection to the project was remote at best and the picketing largely symbolic. “But it would have taken a lot more explaining to the kids,” said Jennifer Strom, a parent who helped organize the protest against a plan to develop 97 luxury home sites and a golf course on 257 acres at the top of Topanga Canyon.

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Canyon Oaks Estates is at the center of the longest-running land-use dispute in Los Angeles County history. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take a final vote on the project Thursday, ending a divisive 15-year battle of personal smears and innuendo between opponents and supporters.

Part of the campaign to kill the project included the children’s march and their signs depicting Disney cartoon characters with fangs and slogans such as “Don’t Mickey Mouse With Our Mountains.” How they ended up in front of Disney’s headquarters is a story almost as complicated as the saga of the project’s tortuous history.

The property is owned by the Lund Family Trust, which was set up by the late Sharon Disney Lund to provide income for her family. Lund was a daughter of the late Walt Disney.

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Disney, in turn, had set up an investment company to support his heirs called Retlaw Enterprises Inc. (Retlaw is Walter spelled backward.) A vice president of the North Hollywood-based Retlaw is also president of the Canyon Oaks Estates limited partnership, although the two are distinct corporations, both from each other and from the Walt Disney Co.

Even so, the children and their parents said they wanted to send a message to Disney heirs that they have greater public obligations than the average entrepreneur.

“The children of Walt Disney have inherited tremendous wealth from this company,” project opponent Susan Nissman said outside the Disney compound on Alameda Street. “They have a social responsibility to the right thing with that money.”

Project manager Charlie McLaughlin argued that he was under direct orders from Lund to develop plans that were sensitive both to the environment and the surrounding community. He said he has fulfilled that obligation, even though some residents continue to oppose the project.

Among the critics is 10-year-old Morley Strom. “I think they shouldn’t do this,” she said. “They’re being grouches. I would like it to be a state park, definitely. I’ve taken hikes there and it’s like a jewel.”

Asked whether she thought the children understood the issues at play, Nissman responded: “Topanga 8- and 9-year-olds are pretty hip.”