CALABASAS : New Draft Plan May Clarify Development

Calabasas officials hope that a revised draft of the city’s first-ever general plan will end months of controversy over how much development should be allowed in the city.

“I think we’re getting there,” said Planning Commissioner Dave Brown. “I think we improved it a great deal, and it still reflects what the community would like to see.”

The Calabasas General Plan/Agenda for the 21st Century is expected to be available for public review this week, said Community Development Director Steve Harris. Copies of that, as well as copies of a revised environmental impact review, will be available at City Hall.

There will be a public workshop on the plan on Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall.

The state Housing and Community Development Department must approve the housing component of the plan, Harris said. The City Council could take action on the plan as early as January.

The city, which incorporated in 1991, began work on the plan in the fall of 1992, Harris said. A citizens advisory committee worked on the project until January of this year, attempting to iron out issues such as what limits should be placed on the number of homes built in the city.

The new draft allows for 900 more homes than was originally allowed, for a total of 2,400 new homes in the next 20 years.

The revisions were made, according to city officials, after several landowners argued that the original draft was unfair. “I would say we are going to try to do what’s fair,” Brown said. “A lot of these people have owned this land for a long time.”

The plan also takes into account the danger of developing near hilltops and in other areas where landslides could endanger lives and property. It requires additional grading and construction reinforcements in areas prone to landslides.

The plan would provide a significant obstacle to Ahmanson Land Co., which wants to build 3,050 homes, two golf courses and 400,000 square feet of commercial space in the hills southeast of Simi Valley on the border of Los Angeles County. It would prohibit widening of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and the extension of Las Virgenes Road to the county line, two key components in Ahmanson’s traffic plan for the project.

The plan is not so cut and dried, however, when it comes to the controversial proposed Calabasas Park Centre. While suggesting the site, at the corner of Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas, is ideal for a mixed-use project, it makes no mention of an acceptable scale.

It says only that the overall purpose of the plan for downtown is to “re-create the character of the traditional small downtown within this area, emphasizing the area’s function as a community gathering place.”

Theodore Rosenquist, who was on the committee that formed the original draft, said Monday that he opposes the removal of language that would have limited traffic congestion and the size of the Park Centre project.