All Downhill : A Couple’s Dreams of a Ridgeline Home Have Tumbled

James Kallas’ dream property was an empty, undeveloped, wind-buffeted hilltop with a spectacular view when he bought it in 1961.

In 1995, it remains just the same, but not by Kallas’ choice.

“Can you imagine how nice it would be to have a house here?” Kallas said, walking along the ridgeline with his wife, Darlean, at his side.

In gestures, the retired pastor painted pictures of where the decks might have gone--one cantilevered out over the Santa Rosa Valley, another looking down on the Cal Lutheran campus.

“I could watch the Cal Lutheran baseball games and never leave the veranda,” Kallas said. At 66, Kallas has completely given up on building his dream house. If he watches Cal Lutheran baseball games, he does so from level ground with the rest of the spectators.

He and his wife rarely come up to their land anymore; it’s just a little too depressing to think about the house they were never able to build.

Time and time again he has encountered restrictive policies of the city of Thousand Oaks that made it impossible to develop the land, he said.

First the couple was restricted by the difficulties and high cost of getting utilities and water to the remote hilltop. When they first climbed up the ridgeline, they said, there were only four houses visible. Now there are houses everywhere, filling the Santa Rosa Valley and ascending the hillsides near the university.

But as civilization crept closer, bringing with it water and power, the couple faced a new difficulty--the city’s policy of protecting ridgelines from development, which prevented the Kallases from building on the land. Selling it was impossible because prospective buyers were all scared off by the ridgeline policy, Kallas said.

When a small development was approved for the land below their property, the city changed the Kallases’ floating easement, restricting them to a steep access route they say would be exorbitantly expensive to pave.

An adjustment to the ridgeline ordinance under consideration by the City Council would allow the couple to build a house and garage on their property, but they would be limited to 2,000 square feet, including the garage.

Now all they want to do is unload the land, get a little money from the city for it and forget the dream entirely. Last December Kallas thought he had succeeded: The council’s finance committee seemed prepared to approve paying him at least $85,000 for the parcel to preserve it permanently as open space and to compensate for the restrictions.

But two weeks ago the committee, including council members Judy Lazar and Andy Fox, recommended that the city reject buying the land, rather than risk establishing an awkward precedent for the city.

“We need to be careful on precedent-setting issues,” Fox said. “The city can’t just buy land for the sake of purchasing it. There needs to be an overriding reason for buying that property.”

Fox points out that if the ordinance is revised, Kallas could go ahead and build. If the full City Council decides against the revision, Fox said, he would reconsider the Kallas purchase, because the imposition of the ordinance would, in effect, be a taking of the land.

If the ordinance is not revised, Fox said, “there is a moral argument where the city should try and purchase the property since there would be no use for it.”

“We need to be careful here, though,” he added. “While buying the land may help out an individual, that is not why you do things. If you are going to buy Mr. Kallas’ land, you might need to buy someone else’s land.”

Chuck Cohen, Kallas’ attorney, said he will ask the council to reconsider the purchase. The asking price of $85,000, plus legal costs of the couple, is “extraordinarily low,” Cohen said.

“I understand that there could be a legitimate concern on the part of city officials that they don’t want to become a land bank,” Cohen said. “But therefore they have to let people use their land in an economically feasible way.”

Kallas said he doesn’t expect the matter to be settled any time soon.

“I’ll be 70 years old and probably dead before it’s settled,” he said bitterly. “It has been a never-ending struggle. I’m beyond mad.”

Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said she believes the city owes it to Kallas to buy his land.

In Kallas’ case, “the city’s decisions have literally landlocked his property,” Zeanah said. “It is impossible for him to sell it. In my own view this is very close, if not actually, a taking. This smacks of abusive city government.”