Palmdale Park-and-Ride Draws Protest : Transportation: Residents say proposed lot would bring urban ills to their neighborhood just outside city limits.

In this city, where thousands of commuters take to the clogged freeways each morning, a new park-and-ride lot encouraging car-pooling and bus travel would seem welcome.

But some wealthy homeowners just outside the city limits have a different response to a 400-space commuter lot planned on West Avenue S: not in our neighborhood.

City officials say they’ll lose a $700,000 grant if they don’t build this lot before September. But the homeowners, who on Friday appealed the project’s design, insist that the parking area will bring urban ills into their upscale neighborhood.

“The city of Palmdale is attempting to thrust more crime, traffic congestion, noise and air pollution, and the lowering of property values, down the throats of non-voting residents,” said a written statement issued Wednesday by homeowners in the Ana Verde and Concord Estates neighborhoods.

In interviews, several homeowners insisted that they are not opposed to park-and-ride lots in general but believe that putting one next to any residential area is poor planning. They fear this one will bring hundreds of people to the edge of their isolated neighborhood, focus attention on their spacious luxury homes, and lead to more burglaries, vandalism and other crimes.

Attorney Dawn L. Reichman, who lives in Ana Verde, said other Antelope Valley commuter lots are next to parks, businesses and undeveloped land.

“None of these is adjacent to homes--let alone expensive homes,” she said. “We feel that crime is like cancer. You want to isolate it. What the city is doing is trying to spread it all over the place.”

“It isn’t a snobbery issue,” she added. “We absolutely believe it should not be in any residential area.”

Reichman and other homeowners said they hope to change the city’s plans over the coming weeks by hiring a planning consultant, proposing other lot locations and suggesting ways to pay for them.

“I’m in agreement that we need park-and-rides,” said Mark Lebens, a real estate broker who lives in Ana Verde. “I just think the park-and-ride could have been set closer to the freeway.”

The dispute erupted more than a year ago, after the city obtained a $700,000 Metropolitan Transportation Authority grant to build a new park-and-ride lot.

No one questions the need for it. A 624-space, park-and-ride that opened in 1992 on Avenue S, just east of the Antelope Valley Freeway, quickly filled, forcing several hundred other drivers to park on nearby streets and dirt areas of the largely undeveloped neighborhood.

Even before the first park-and-ride was built, that portion of Avenue S was a popular place for Los Angeles-bound car-poolers to meet. The paved and lighted lot, watched by a security guard, provided a safe place for commuters to park their vehicles.

The city plans to add 400 spaces to the existing Avenue S lot, but local officials say even that will not be enough, particularly after thousands of new houses are built in the Ritter Ranch and City Ranch communities in southwest Palmdale.

In 1993, the MTA provided funds to build another lot, and the California Department of Transportation offered free use of its four-acre parcel at Avenue S and Geiger Avenue, just west of the freeway.

That site is just down the hill from Ana Verde and Concord Estates, two of the Antelope Valley’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Physicians, lawyers and other professionals own the houses, many of which sell for more than $400,000, are built on minimum, one-acre lots, and overlook the California Aqueduct and Lake Palmdale.

The neighborhoods are in an unincorporated area, just beyond Palmdale’s southern border, so residents cannot vote in City Council elections.

After the Ana Verde and Concord Estates residents protested the new park-and-ride plan in September, 1993, the Palmdale City Council agreed to look for other locations, including land that might be swapped for the lot owned by Caltrans.

The city looked at 21 other sites, but all were either unavailable or too expensive to buy or build on, said Leon Swain, the city’s deputy public works director.

“There just weren’t any other sites we could get for free, which the Caltrans site was,” Swain said. “Some of the property owners were just not willing to sell. Some wanted pretty substantial sums for their property.”

As a result, late last year, the City Council authorized construction at the original site. City officials hope to seek construction bids in May and build the lot this summer.

On March 17, the city’s planning director approved the project’s design, but the homeowners appealed the decision to the Planning Commission, which will review the proposal next month. Even if that panel rejects the protest, the homeowners could appeal again to the City Council.

Mayor Jim Ledford said resuming the search for a new location could jeopardize the MTA funding. “We tried to come up with an alternative,” he said. “We have a drop-dead date on this grant. If we don’t utilize it, we’ll lose it.”

Ledford disputed the residents’ view that another commuter lot on Avenue S was poor planning. He said the street is becoming a busy thoroughfare, connecting the city’s newer neighborhoods with the freeway. He said its original zoning--for large luxury homes--is no longer appropriate.

“We spent a lot of time and resources trying to address their concerns,” Ledford said of the Ana Verde residents. “We’ve tried to be good neighbors, but ultimately, something’s going to happen on Avenue S.”