U.S. Payments Due Landowners Imperiled

Martin Manrique bought his 10-acre spread in Zuma Canyon 23 years ago, figuring to make a killing on it by the time he wanted to retire.

Well, he wants to retire now--and it is just about killing him.

On Thursday he learned that he may not get the $260,000 he was counting on from a state park agency that agreed three years ago to buy the land; the deal is in real danger of unraveling because, oddly enough, of the continuing budget stalemate in Washington.

Too bad, because in his mind the money’s already spent: Huge medical bills for his daughter, who broke her elbow and wrist recently, retirement from the upholstery business for himself, maybe even surgery to correct the dwindling sight in his 72-year-old eyes.

“I thought I’d be wealthy by now,” said the Westchester resident, who originally bought the parcel for $15,000. “Now I am barely coasting. It will be very bad for me if they don’t come through.”

Manrique has plenty of company in his anxiety about the money.

Ten other people who own property bordered or surrounded by federal parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains are owed a total of $4.2 million, with the payments due between March and September this year. Many of them are elderly pensioners who, like Manrique, are depending on the money for their retirement. Another is the estate of the late motion picture director Frank Capra.

The conservancy wanted the properties because they would supply land for nearly four miles of the scenic 70-mile Backbone Trail that stretches from Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades to Point Mugu in Ventura County.

The landowners sold their properties in a complicated deal to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority in 1993 for 10% down and a note promising full payment plus 8% annual interest in 1996.

A spokesman for the MRCA, a state parkland acquisition agency, said Thursday that the authority planned to pay off the debt with money it expected to receive from the National Park Service. The federal agency had promised to buy the properties this year from the authority, which would in turn have used the proceeds to pay off the notes.

But Congress, which is locked in a budget stalemate with President Clinton, has not yet appropriated money for the Department of the Interior, the parent agency of the National Park Service.

That leaves the park service with no funds to carry through purchase of the Santa Monica Mountains properties, or $45 million worth of similar park acquisitions elsewhere in the nation.

“There isn’t anyone who’s aware of this situation who isn’t concerned about these retirees’ plight, and who isn’t trying to come to a solution,” said Arthur Eck, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “As soon as the appropriation is passed and money for these acquisitions is released, we will distribute it to these people.”

The promise is cold comfort to Gus Hasselquist. The 69-year-old McDonnell Douglas retiree has heard such vows come and go.

A former aerospace engineer, Hasselquist bought his eight-acre piece of the Santa Monicas near Sandstone Peak in 1965. He planned to build a house on the grassy and wooded terrain for his six children, but said he got “too much static from the county,” and decided to sell if he could.

Unable to sell the land privately because it is surrounded by federal parkland, Hasselquist was delighted when the National Park Service offered to buy it in 1993 for its appraised price of $350,000.

The money would have come as a real relief: The home he bought in Malibu in 1950 burned down in 1982, and he’d been living in a mobile home on the site since.

When the government offered to buy his mountain land, Hasselquist decided to rebuild in Malibu--going nearly $100,000 into debt, due next month--in the expectation that he would be paid by the government.

“If they don’t pay me, I might lose my home,” he said. “I really need the money. I figured that when the government owes you money, it’s as good as gold. I never dreamed there would be any problems being paid.”

Joseph T. Edmiston, top official of the MRCA, said he believes the federal government has the “moral and political responsibility” to come through with the money to buy the properties from Hasselquist, Manrique and the others.

Calling by cellular phone from a snowy road on vacation in Lake Tahoe on Thursday, Edmiston said he also feels the pensioners’ dilemma personally.

“We are not disrespectful of our obligations and are working our butts off to pay them without incurring further interest charges,” he said.

Edmiston said he had personally lobbied Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in an effort to find emergency funding even if the Washington budget stalemate isn’t solved next month.

“We want to make sure the people in Washington know this money is not to acquire the backyards of rich Westsiders as Republicans have said, but that it would be used for genuine hardship cases like Mr. Hasselquist.”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

“We don’t care if the National Park Service, the MRCA, the conservancy or God himself pays off these notes, but they’re due,” said Ty Sisson, another landowner.