Judge OKs City’s Approval of Tract : Thousand Oaks: Sierra Club had claimed the council ignored guidelines in approving a 220-home project.

Rejecting the Sierra Club’s claims that Thousand Oaks had abandoned its own environmental policies in favor of a developer, a Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the city had acted properly.

City Atty. Mark Sellers said he had not received a copy of Judge Barbara Lane’s lengthy decision, but he said it is a clear victory for Thousand Oaks, validating the city’s environmental policies.

“We have been very careful with the project out there,” Sellers said. “We’ve done more environmental reviews than on any other project I can remember. We are not known as a city to ignore environmental concerns.”

The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund filed the lawsuit against the city in August. The suit called the city’s 3-2 approval of the 220-home Dos Vientos housing development in Newbury Park in July an “unprecedented blunder.”

The lawsuit argued that the city overlooked important environmental concerns, including damage to air quality and destruction of a major wildlife corridor, in favor of a 1990 development agreement.

The agreement gave two developers, Operating Engineers and Courtly Homes, the right to build 2,350 residences on a vast parcel of grassland and rolling hills at the city’s southwest corner. The land is adjacent to National Park Service lands and to Broome Ranch, a parcel of open space jointly owned by the city and the Conejo Valley Recreation and Park District.

In exchange, the city will eventually receive $12.6 million in developers’ fees, about 1,200 acres of open space and funds set aside for parks, schools and other amenities.

While Councilwomen Elois Zeanah and Jaime Zukowski voted against allowing the 220 homes at Dos Vientos last July, Councilwoman Judy Lazar and then Councilmen Frank Schillo and Alex Fiore said they were obligated to approve the project because of the development agreement.

Such contracts between developers and city governments have been legal in the state for 15 years. Sellers said they give both cities and developers security that a project will go forward, regardless of the local political climate.

“There is a time when you have to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” Sellers said. “Developers have to have some certainty in their lives as to what they can do with this property.”

Lane’s ruling upholds the sanctity of those agreements, he said.

“What the courts are saying is that there has got to be some fixed rules,” Sellers said.

Sierra Club attorneys were not available for comment Tuesday. The group’s local spokeswoman, Cassandra Auerbach, said she does not know whether the Sierra Club will appeal the decision by Lane.

“We really need to look at her decision and see what she has to say,” Auerbach said. “Of course we are disappointed; we would have liked to win.”

Operating Engineers’ attorney, Wayne Jett, said the development--which has been delayed by the lawsuit and other impediments--will go forward, with grading expected to begin in about a month. The 220-home project should be finished in 1996, he said.

Jett said he was pleased by the decision.

“The statute is clear, and the case shouldn’t have ever been filed,” he said. “The court merely did its duty as required by the statute.”

Jett said the environmentalists’ contention that a major wildlife corridor runs through the proposed development was wrong.

But Michelle Koetke, a leader of Residents to Preserve Newbury Park, which raised more than $10,000 to support the Sierra Club lawsuit, disputed that.

“I’ve seen two adult cougars on Reino Road in the last year,” Koetke said. “I’ve seen a full grown mule deer. Who are we kidding? Something is supporting all this [wildlife].”