MTA, Parks Panel Strike Deal on Tunnel

In a blow to opponents of Metro Rail subway construction, the Los Angeles city parks department has tentatively decided to end its resistance to tunneling under Runyon Canyon Park in the Hollywood Hills and sell an underground easement to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The MTA will pay $150,000 for the subterranean pathway--about $5 million less than the amount the parks department had called “nonnegotiable,” only a month ago, but far more than the $1,000 originally offered.

The deal--brokered over the past week by County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky--included the promise of fast access to a $4-million trust fund to fix any damage that digging might cause to the popular hillside park, as well as an acknowledgment from the MTA that it will also be liable for damages in excess of that amount.

“We got what we needed,” said Board of Recreation and Parks Commission President Steve Soboroff, who helped negotiate the accord, which will be presented for approval to the full parks commission on March 6 and the MTA board March 27. Approval will clear the last remaining hurdle for the agency’s plan to burrow through the Santa Monica Mountains.

Tunnel opponents expressed sorrow and regret over the accord because the city had been a powerful ally against the MTA’s ambitious plans.

“We don’t feel happy about this. We think they should get more,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which had provided the parks department with the scientific underpinning for its opposition so far.

Added state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), a key subway opponent: “I think it’s a bad idea for all kinds of reasons.”

The tentative agreement comes after a year and a half of strenuous debate over the value of easements directly under two 2.3-mile tunnels that will connect Red Line stations in Universal City and Hollywood.

The MTA has appraised the ribbon of dirt 200 to 800 feet below the Earth’s surface at a nominal value of $1,000. Most private landowners in the ritzy hillside neighborhood, where houses sell for $300,000 to more than $1 million, have instead contended that the digging and blasting would diminish the value of their homes by up to 25%.

The city parks department had wanted even more, demanding that the MTA purchase three nearby parcels of open space for about $5 million as a sort of environmental insurance policy. Backing up their demand was an analysis prepared by the conservancy that suggested tunneling could drain water from the park and leave it barren.

With the start of tunneling only two months away, Yaroslavsky said on Wednesday that he wanted to break the stalemate between the MTA and the parks department and prevent a condemnation lawsuit that could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“A payment of several million dollars was just not in the cards,” Yaroslavsky said. “The last thing we needed was for two public agencies to sue each other and expend all those additional funds for nothing.”

Yaroslavsky said he encouraged the MTA to raise its most recent offer of $50,000 by $100,000, and encouraged Soboroff to accept the compromise.

“The MTA staff is reasonably confident, and so am I, that the jeopardy to plant life and wildlife at Runyon Canyon is nil,” Yaroslavsky said. “I can’t think of a circumstance in which there will be a single dead tree or bush.”

Jennifer Palmer-Lacey, a docent at the popular park where the history of Old Hollywood can be seen in the rubble of a mansion where swashbuckling Errol Flynn once lived, expressed remorse at the news. “We’ve been trying so hard to encourage them not to give up,” she said. “They got less than half what it’s worth.”

Three key factors triggered the deal, according to Yaroslavsky and Soboroff: The transportation agency’s decision to forgo explosives under homes when carving out underground equipment rooms, its agreement to cut in half the amount of water it plans to drain from the mountain and its decision to abandon the construction of an 800-foot ventilation shaft.

“The new leadership at the MTA seems to be extra sensitive to these issues,” Soboroff said on Wednesday.

Soboroff bristled at critics of the deal such as Hayden, who believe the subway should not be built at all, and Edmiston, who supports Metro Rail but believes the tunnel should never have been routed beneath a public park.

“Our job is not to make judgments on whether or not the system was properly routed or designed 10 years ago,” he said. “We’re dealing solely with the value of an underground easement and its impact on a park.”

In addition, he said the MTA would place $4 million into escrow for five years after the completion of tunneling to pay for any potential damage to the park.

Joseph Drew, interim chief executive officer of the MTA, called the easement payment and trust fund “clearly in the interest of taxpayers” even though it was 150,000 times greater than the agency’s initial offer.

“This is the kind of decision that works for both sides very clearly,” he said.

Drew also said he didn’t think it would set a precedent for the 72 individual hillside property owners whose subsurface easements now face condemnation action by the agency.

“The park is 1,000 times bigger than the private property easements,” he said. “We’re OK on the order of magnitude allocation of value.”

Hayden, for his part, vowed not to give up. He promised a two-hour presentation to the parks commission next month on the ecological dangers of tunneling under Runyon Canyon in an effort to change the panel’s mind.