Marquez Canyon Plan Stirs Dispute : Development: Brentwood businessman hopes to build car museum and botanical garden on 5.5-acre site in Pacific Palisades. Leader of community group voices opposition to proposal.

A wealthy Brentwood businessman has unveiled a plan to build an antique car museum and botanical garden in Marquez Canyon, reviving a long-simmering debate over the future of the Pacific Palisades site.

Peter Mullin hopes to succeed where others have failed, namely, to garner enough community support to buy and develop 5.5 acres owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in an area of million-dollar homes.

Mullin, a high-powered corporate pension plan consultant, wants to build the nonprofit museum and gardens near Sunset Boulevard and Marquez Avenue on 11 acres of separate, but connected, parcels owned by the conservancy, the city of Los Angeles and a private developer.

The museum would house some of the businessman-philanthropist’s extensive collection of pre-World War II French racing vehicles, surrounded by a botanical garden that supporters have said would be comparable to Canada’s famed Butchart Gardens.

“He has a strong and abiding love for both autos and botanical gardens, and sees this (project) as an opportunity to merge the two interests,” said development consultant Gary Morris, a spokesman for Mullin.

Morris said his client is “cautiously optimistic” about the project’s chances. “The more exchange we’ve had with the community, the more receptive people have become.”

But others, including the head of a community group whose members have long opposed development of the conservancy property, expressed a different view.

“People are adamantly against it,” said Kurt Toppel, president of the Marquez Knolls Neighborhood Assn. “The consensus here is that (the conservancy parcel) either be used as a simple neighborhood park or be left alone.”

The conservancy, which has desperately wanted to sell the property since acquiring it as part of a complicated land swap in 1991, is expected to formally open bids next month.

Observers say the project’s prospects are more likely to depend on Mullin’s success in wooing community support than on his ability to spend the millions of dollars it would take to develop his plan.

Expressing concerns about traffic and noise, some community leaders have suggested they will go to court, if necessary, to block the project.

Morris, who presented Mullin’s plans to the conservancy board last week, dismissed the traffic concerns, saying that plans call for the garden and museum to be visited by appointment only in a system similar to that used at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The conservancy obtained the land in 1991 from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as part of an arrangement to help finance the purchase of Fryman Canyon in the hills above Studio City.

To help raise the funds, the conservancy took $2 million from a trust fund earmarked for Temescal Gateway Park, which is also in Pacific Palisades. The DWP, in turn, transferred the Marquez property to the conservancy with the understanding that proceeds from the sale would be used to reimburse the trust fund.

But some Marquez residents cried foul, insisting that the canyon was being sacrificed to preserve another canyon 11 miles away.

Not wanting to be cast as the villain in a struggle between the neighbors and would-be developers, the conservancy took extraordinary steps to accommodate a last-minute bid by a group of Marquez neighbors who professed interest in buying the property for $1.8 million.

But the group raised only $25,000.

The conservancy further delayed the sale after another group, the Marquez Canyon Preservation Assn., pushed for a special tax district to allow the 3,500 households nearest the canyon to preserve it as parkland.

But the effort fizzled last year after Los Angeles Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents Pacific Palisades, said he would not pursue the creation of a tax district unless 70% of the people who would have to foot the bill supported the idea.

Although other funds were later used to make the needed improvements to Temescal park, the cash-strapped conservancy has yet to fully recover from the 1991 transaction.

Joseph T. Edmiston, the agency’s executive director, said the proceeds from the sale of the Marquez property are desperately needed to help purchase a private parcel surrounded by parkland in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, where a property owner wants to build a 10,000-square-foot mansion.

Edmiston, who was criticized by Pacific Palisades activists for the conservancy’s role in the Marquez arrangement, stressed that the agency did not initiate talks with Mullin, even though it is legally obligated to try to sell the property. “They came to us,” he said.