Developer Blocks Horse Riders From Using Paths : Dispute: Equestrians are upset with the Dos Vientos housing project for restricting use of trails during construction, despite a verbal agreement to keep them open.

Horseback riders accustomed to exploring the dusty hills off Potrero Road in Newbury Park are being turned away by guards hired by the Dos Vientos housing development, despite a verbal agreement to leave the well-worn paths open during construction.

Thousand Oaks city officials, who last week delayed a vote on a builder’s request to drop some development conditions, criticized the action as retribution, and vowed to discuss the issue on an emergency basis at tonight’s council meeting.

“This was obviously retaliation on the part of Dos Vientos,” Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said Monday. “That is the way I read it.”

But Wayne Jett, an attorney representing Operating Engineers Funds Inc., an investment arm of the labor union that owns the 4,500-acre Dos Vientos property, said his clients merely want to prevent access to the site during construction, which began last week.

“It’s private property and we have to maintain security,” Jett said. “It makes no sense for horse riders to be riding in a construction site.”

In a confrontation over the weekend that one witness called “nasty,” security guards ran a group of riders off the former site of Two Winds Ranch, a riding and boarding facility that earlier this month moved across the street to the publicly owned Broome Ranch.

“It was my understanding and everyone else’s that they would always let us have access to the trails across the road,” complained Lance Holt, a longtime horseman who was riding in a nearby ring when other riders were chased from the Dos Vientos property.

Holt said the security guard was rude and surly. “They actually had the sheriff come” and tell the riders to stop trespassing, he said. “Pretty nasty, huh?”

The developer plans to build 220 homes in the first phase of the development. But when Dos Vientos is completed, it will boast more than 2,300 new houses.

Mark Towne, an assistant planner for the city of Thousand Oaks, said his office received numerous complaints from riders Monday.

“There was basically a verbal agreement to allow continued access to Dos Vientos Ranch, but [the landowners] have apparently changed their mind,” said Towne, who says his office is looking for other access routes to the hills.

As a condition of approval, city officials required the developers to allow public access when construction is complete.

“The public will definitely have access to more than 1,200 acres of open space,” Towne said. “It’s a question of working to provide continued access during construction.”

But last week, the property owners asked the City Council to approve changes to the project that would, among other things, do away with a condition for approval that requires a seven-acre equestrian center within Dos Vientos.

Council members delayed the vote indefinitely, while a study is performed to determine whether it is appropriate to build an alternate center at Broome Ranch .

Towne said his office was exploring alternatives to allowing equestrians into the hills above Dos Vientos.

But Zeanah said she would not be manipulated.

“We can’t let them intimidate us, and that is what they are trying to do,” she said.

Times staff writer Mary F. Pols contributed to this report.