Investor Banks on Forgiveness : Topanga: Steve Carlson’s family’s earlier efforts angered many, but now he hopes the community will back his restaurant and proposed retail center.

Local real estate investor Steve Carlson, whose family has a stormy history in this rustic canyon, has bet a small fortune that his neighbors are ready to forgive and forget.

Carlson, who infuriated many people back in 1987 when he tried to grade land without permits, has invested heavily in a new restaurant and proposed retail center in the canyon’s town center. He hopes people realize that he has learned from his mistakes, he says, and that they will support his new plans.

“I was a lot more hardheaded back then,” said Carlson, who owns a large portion of the land surrounding the canyon’s post office and general store.

By most accounts, the nine-year Topanga resident has been forgiven. But the jury is still out on whether this close-knit Santa Monica Mountains community--where many view any development with suspicion--shares his vision.

“The community did not seem to be aware of this project, and because it is a project in the center of Topanga, it’s something that the community should be involved in,” said Roger Pugliese, chairman of the Topanga Assn. for a Scenic Community.

Carlson and his wife, Leslie, have all the necessary permits for the restaurant, which opens in October in a wood building that blends with its setting off Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Their proposed retail center across the street still requires approval from the California Coastal Commission, which was to have voted on the issue Sept. 15 but postponed a decision at the request of Pugliese’s group.

Instead, the Town Council is holding a public meeting Thursday to discuss the proposal. The Coastal Commission said it expects to take up the application again in December, along with residents’ comments.

Some people say the canyon needs another restaurant but that they aren’t sure about the retail center, which Carlson has had designed to look like Topanga’s original post office and general store, torn down years ago. He and his wife refused to say how much they are spending on the restaurant and proposed retail center, other than “a small fortune.”

Dan Larson, an archeologist who lives in Topanga, says there’s an ancient Indian burial ground at the retail center site that would be disturbed by construction. The Coastal Commission says there is evidence of a village at the site, not a cemetery, but that if any sacred objects turn up during Carlson’s excavation, work will have to stop to comply with state law.

Larson also said he worries that the project would bring more traffic and even create a need for a traffic light, which he thinks would clash with Topanga’s rural character.

Despite those concerns, Melanie Hale, a program analyst for the Coastal Commission, said she will recommend that the project be approved.

“I can assure you there is no basis for a denial recommendation on this project,” she said. “But all we [staff members] do is recommend, and the commission votes.”

Carlson says he’s not in it so much for the money, but rather to make Topanga a better place to live. He says he hopes the diner-style restaurant will become a community gathering spot, a homey place where people can go for three meals a day. The two-building retail center, on an 82,000-square-foot lot, would provide space for a bank and other services now lacking.

The idea, the Carlsons say, is to make Topanga more self-sufficient.

“People in Topanga don’t support Topanga businesses,” Leslie Carlson said. “They want to live here, but they want to do everything else out of the canyon.”

The Carlsons hope the retail project would attract tourists.

“We are listed in a travel guide as a place to go and people get there and there is nothing to do,” Steve Carlson said. “There is nowhere to get out and explore Topanga because there is nothing to do.”

The Carlsons appear to have a reservoir of good will to draw from. They have become active boosters of the community, helping, for example, to raise money for Topanga Elementary School. To build their restaurant, they used local contractors when they could.

“They have worked very hard at integrating themselves into the community,” said Marty Brastow, a longtime Topanga resident who opposed Carlson’s original project.

Brastow and others blame Carlson’s father, Arnold--who spearheaded the 1987 project--for much of the trouble.

The elder Carson wanted to move dirt from one side of Topanga Canyon Boulevard to another to fill a lot next to Topanga Creek, but without the necessary permits. He refused to abandon his plans and actually succeeded in moving the earth, despite community protests and objections from the Coastal Commission. At one point, he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of altering a stream bed and was held in jail for six hours before he was released on $250 bail.

Steve Carlson said his father, who lives in Los Angeles, is no longer involved in the project. The younger Carlson said he has worked within the system. “This is all being done by the books,” he said.

Some people say they are glad Carlson wants to clean up an eyesore--a vacant lot littered with junk--but they wonder whether he will ever be able to find tenants for the retail center.

“There are rental places going vacant now,” said Shari Hagemeister, a local real estate broker who says she has mixed feelings about Carlson’s plans.

Steve Carlson said that while it’s true there are vacancies in the largest office complex in Topanga, across the street from his proposed buildings, it’s only because that side of the street has become run-down with vagrants who hang around the stores and drink. His proposed complex, he said, would not rent to businesses such as liquor stores, which attract loiterers.

Some people agree that the town needs more services such as banks and restaurants. And, they say, even isolationist Topanga can’t avoid some change.

“If they build something nice that blends into the community, I think it will be all right,” said Aeleysia Olsasky, who has lived in the canyon off and on for the past 20 years. “What’s wrong with having a little business?”

“We need some entrepreneurial people in this community,” Hagemeister said. “I’d hate to see him get shot down.”