Church Lobbies for Scaled-Back Development : Newbury Park: Seventh-day Adventists have new plan for 458-acre property in a secluded canyon. But project still has elements the city rejected earlier.

Three months after a stinging setback, Seventh-day Adventist Church officials have regrouped and launched a lobbying campaign touting a new, scaled-back development for their Newbury Park property.

This week, the church will submit a revised proposal to Thousand Oaks city planners, reducing the number of homes set in a secluded canyon and cutting back the amount of grading needed on canyon walls.

But supporters admit that even the reduced grading violates the city’s planning laws. And the proposal still includes a large retail center that helped doom the plan when it came before the Planning Commission in January.

Before going back to city planners, church leaders will try to woo their Newbury Park neighbors in a public relations blitz worthy of a well-oiled political campaign.

More than 8,000 invitations have been mailed to area residents, inviting them to attend a meeting Sunday, after which clusters of the curious will tour the canyon--dotted with oak trees and scrub brush--where the church wants to build a 33-acre campus on the 458 acres it owns.

Church officials hope to appeal to their neighbors as fellow landowners who have owned the canyon for nearly 50 years.

They said Wednesday that they want to recapture the rustic seclusion that was found immediately after World War II when their church campus of two schools, 44 homes and a retirement center was built on 90 acres on the front end of their parcel near Wendy Drive.

“We are the old-timers of Newbury Park,” church spokesman Jere Wallack said. “We have been here longer than anybody else.”

Wallack said the church intends to sell that land, which now nearly abuts the Ventura Freeway, to commercial developers. Target Stores has all but agreed to build on an 11-acre parcel, and church officials are soliciting other big retailers and merchandisers, such as T. J. Maxx and Montgomery Ward.

Development plans also call for a multiple-screen movie theater, several restaurants and smaller retailers to replace the Seventh-day Adventist Church Academy.

Proceeds of that sale would help the church move its campus farther north on the property into a canyon about half a mile over a ridge--and a world away from the freeway. There, against rolling green hills, the church wants to build its elementary and high schools, retirement center for 220 people and 44 homes on 33 acres in the bottom of the canyon.

In a 4-0 vote in January, commissioners rejected a similar plan, saying it did not conform to the city’s General Plan and threatened to destroy rare vegetation.

Charles Cohen, the church’s attorney, conceded that the new plan “will not bring us into strict conformity” with the city’s planning laws and that some vegetation will be lost.

But he cites the more than $1 million in tax money a retail developer is capable of pouring into city coffers as well as the church’s willingness to spend $5 million on road improvements, including a new Wendy Drive freeway interchange.

To entice commissioners to change their minds, church officials have decided to build 44 homes instead of the 82 originally proposed, reducing the amount of hillside that engineers have to cut while grading the canyon.

Cohen said he hopes that the Planning Commission can rule on the proposal by July.

But the plan still promises to be controversial and draw opposition from environmental quarters.

“It’s open space,” Planning Commissioner Linda Parks said. “Philosophically, I always have a problem developing open space.”

Parks did commend church officials for bringing the project back to the commission instead of taking it directly to the City Council.

“That’s the right way to do things,” she said. “We look at planning issues more closely.”

Meanwhile, a Sierra Club official said her organization will more than likely oppose the new proposal just as vehemently as it opposed the original plan.

“I’m not impressed,” Sierra Club spokeswoman Cassandra Auerbach said, adding that the plan violates city planning law. For the proposal to be legal, the General Plan would have to be changed, Auerbach said.

She said the city’s General Plan calls for only two large commercial developments in the city: one at The Oaks shopping center and another in North Ranch. The development would also violate noise restrictions, she said.

But the Sierra Club takes exception to building in the canyon and, in particular, the degradation of the canyon walls.

“The canyon down there is absolutely spectacular,” Auerbach said. “It’s a haven for wildlife and oak trees.”

But church officials argue that development has already encroached on the area. About 300 yards away, the city’s corporation yard and a Baxter Healthcare building sit on plateaus cut into nearby hills. The buildings and two slopes created by grading are easily seen from the church property.

“We are not exactly in a pristine bowl,” Cohen said.

City planning staff members did not return calls seeking comment.

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FYI

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is offering tours of its Newbury Park property at 3 p.m. Sunday. Visitors should come to the Amgen Inc. corporate headquarters community room, Building 9, 1849 De Havilland Drive.