Group Searches for Star Appeal in Fight Against Development : Environment: Save Open Space’s plea to help oppose the Ahmanson Ranch project fails to stir the celebrity community.

Mary Wiesbrock is star searching.

The director of the environmental group Save Open Space isn’t exactly out beating the bushes in the Hollywood Hills looking for actors and actresses. Not yet anyway.

But finding a popular celebrity--preferably an articulate one with at least a fleeting interest in the environment--to join her group’s cause against the proposed Ahmanson Ranch development is proving harder than she thought.

Dick Van Dyke, who helped in Save Open Space’s effort to make Jordan Ranch part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, is too busy with a television project to help out. Tom Selleck, who lives in Hidden Valley, hasn’t expressed interest in the issue.

What about local residents Heather Locklear, Sophia Loren or Frankie Avalon? None of them have responded to the initial plea from Save Open Space for celebrity assistance. Wiesbrock began seeking celebrity help after a lawsuit to stop the proposed 3,050-house development at Ahmanson Ranch by her group and eight others was rejected in March by a Ventura County judge. The lawsuit contended that the development would clog the Ventura Freeway, create air pollution and cause adverse environmental impacts on Los Angeles County, while destroying open space.

She wrote letters to the editors of all the local papers, asking for monetary donations and a high-profile advocate for the group.

“Needed now are a big name celebrity and lots of $$$$$$ to appeal the recent Ventura County court decision,” she wrote. “Help this last ditch effort.”

Almost two months later, there have been no sympathetic stirrings in the Hollywood community. Wiesbrock said she thinks the star community will rally once they learn about the development.

“I want to get a packet out to Robert Redford, but I just haven’t had the time,” she said. Redford might be interested, she thinks, because of his environmental efforts in the past and because he directed the movie “The Milagro Beanfield War” in which a group of poor farmers defeats a proposed development.

“I’m sure they all get approached everyday,” she added. “But we’re desperately looking for a celebrity. It would make our work easier. Maybe we’ll try for Paul Newman. We just haven’t been able to get to anyone. They’re all so busy themselves and they all have publicists to go through.”

Part of the problem may be a lack of a clear target; Wiesbrock says it’s hard to pin down which stars actually live near the proposed development.

The idea of a celebrity spokesperson also appeals to Bill Bell, director of Mountain View Estates Owners Assn., one of the other parties in the lawsuit. He hopes to form a committee, including celebrities, to fight the project.

“Having them lend their presence is important,” Bell said. “And there are a number of celebrities that live out that way.”

Who?

“Well, I really don’t know. But I’ve heard there are people who live out that way,” he said.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the county, stars have been turning out in droves worthy of film premieres to protect the sanctity of their Ojai homes from the perceived health threat of a National Weather Service radar tower. Their efforts have included a bowling fund-raiser in Ojai.

Why the difference?

“I think there is a real passion about this community,” said Kim Maxwell-Brown, organizer of the Ojai fund-raising effort and wife of actor Dwier Brown, who played Kevin Costner’s father in the movie “Field of Dreams.”

“Most of us moved here to get away from L.A. and the dangers of living there. This is a small town where everybody knows each other and everything pretty much closes down at night. There is a great passion to keep it that way.”

Star power is considerable, Maxwell-Brown acknowledged. Though many Ojai residents are putting in time and money to the effort to move the tower, people like singer Rickie Lee Jones, actors Larry Hagman, Scott Bakula and Mary Steenburgen can bring national attention.

Steenburgen was instrumental in getting Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to come to town last week to speak against the tower.

“The sheer donation of her (Steenburgen) time has been the most helpful thing,” Maxwell-Brown said. “It’s really made a big difference, really helped us out. Most people here don’t have the money or the big celebrity name that she has.”

Ojai is lucky, she said. Its famous residents have helped defeat a proposal to put a county dump in Weldon Canyon, the development of a private golf resort and a petroleum plant expansion.

But using fame can be a “double-edged sword,” she added. Somehow, the conflict can seem less serious when celebrities are involved.

“We’ve had fun poked at us by people who think that everyone up here is a really wealthy star just worried about their big fancy homes,” Maxwell-Brown said. “It’s actually a really big mix.”

Maxwell-Brown speculated that Save Open Space has not been successful to date in involving celebrities with the anti-Ahmanson movement because no stars are aware of the cause.

“A lot of times I’ve found that people just haven’t been contacted,” she said. “If people are informed, I think they do what they can.”

County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, who was hand-picked as a candidate by Save Open Space for the supervisor’s race in 1990 and then fell out with the group after she voted to approve a revised Ahmanson development plan, disagreed.

“After how much publicity that whole thing has gotten, I can’t imagine that there is anyone who hasn’t heard something about it,” VanderKolk said.

Unless there is a celebrity who might be directly impacted by the development, VanderKolk said she thought it unlikely that Save Open Space will have any luck.

“It’s sort of naive to think that someone is just going to pop up out of the blue,” she said. “You kind of need to have some connections there. If you just put a letter in the paper, I don’t think anyone is going to respond. I certainly admire them for their tenacity. But as far as a celebrity is concerned, well, what they really need more than anything is money.”

Ahmanson spokeswoman Mary Trigg said she did not know whether a celebrity spokesperson for the opponents would affect the fate of the project.

“I don’t know what a celebrity would necessarily do for any of the groups,” Trigg said. “Maybe someone who could speak to it from some sort of emotion, someone who would be believable because they really had those feelings. But I don’t know enough about it to know whether it really helps in the long run.”

Right now, Trigg said, the company is focusing on litigation. The nine groups that lost the Ventura lawsuit have until May 27 to file appeals. Three of them--the city of Calabasas, the Mountain View Estate Owners Assn. and the city of Los Angeles--have already filed appeals. The others, according to Bell, will also appeal by the deadline.

Wiesbrock said she has other hopes for stopping the development. She is lobbying for the passage of the $2-billion California Parks and Wildlife Bond issue, Proposition 180, on the June ballot, which she said would give the state park service the money to buy the Ahmanson Ranch and turn it into permanent open space.

But if Redford should ride in on a white horse . . .