Cash-Poor Conservancy Can’t Move Mountains

Beaten up and almost broke, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy votes tonight on whether to abandon a three-year legal quest for Soka University’s scenic Calabasas campus--a necessity that frees the agency from an unwinnable fight, preserves hundreds of acres from development and saves millions of dollars to buy more land for public parks.

At the same time, the almost-certain approval of the settlement proposed earlier this month has drawn the wrath of residents and environmentalists who accuse the conservancy of backing away from a 20-year dream of establishing a park on Soka’s historic, oak-studded grounds.

After a decade of spectacular success in which the conservancy cobbled together thousands of acres of parkland, the decision to withdraw from its nastiest battle marks a particularly difficult period for an agency that once prided itself on win-win negotiations in local land-use fights.

This time, though, there are only losers.

Under the terms of the settlement proposed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), the conservancy would drop its condemnation lawsuit against the Japanese language school.

The conservancy filed the action in 1992, hoping to seize 245 acres of Soka’s campus--including the historic mansion of razor magnate King Gillette--for use as a visitors center to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Soka had already refused to sell the land to the conservancy when it went to court.

Now, in return for the conservancy dropping its case, Soka would set aside 375 acres as public open space and agree not to build on another 35 acres. In addition, the school--which wants to expand to a full liberal-arts college--would cap its student body at 650 for at least 25 years and limit construction during that period to 440,000 square feet.

No one involved in the deal can honestly call it great. Instead, as Yaroslavsky put it, it’s the “least bad” alternative. “I would have preferred to have this whole property in public hands,” he said. “This is a good solution given the cards we have in our hand. We have no money. The conservancy has no money.”

As in most court cases, both sides concede, hard fiscal realities drove the settlement more than anything else. Already the conservancy has spent more than $1 million of public money on legal fees, and its cash reserves are too depleted to meet even a below-market price for Soka’s property. That shortage has handicapped the conservancy not only financially, but legally.

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The conservancy actually won the right to condemn Soka’s property in 1994 on the basis that its public purpose as a park superseded the land’s private use as a school. But under the state’s eminent-domain law, a jury must set the price Soka would be paid--somewhere between the conservancy’s estimate of about $20 million and the school’s estimate of roughly twice that.

If the conservancy could not meet the jury’s price within 30 days of the judgment, then Soka could keep all its land and sue the agency for millions of dollars in damages. Recognizing the very real possibility of such a scenario, conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston has sought for the past 18 months to extricate the agency from the lawsuit.

When the conservancy launched condemnation proceedings, the agency was riding a wave of success and could count on a fairly steady flow of cash for acquisitions. But as the lawsuit slowly wound its way through the courts, funding sources dried up, anticipated bond measures failed and the conservancy spent its cash on other properties to take advantage of falling real-estate prices.

Adding to the conservancy’s changing fortunes was a $10-million loss in 1994, when a developer failed to repay that sum. The conservancy had bought Liberty Canyon in the Simi Hills from Potomac Investments, a partner in the massive Ahmanson Ranch development, in the belief that the company would buy it back at a later date and then donate it as parkland. But the buyback deal fell through when Potomac dropped out of the project.

That same year, the conservancy contributed about $5.8 million of its cash reserves toward the purchase of a valley at the top of Topanga Canyon, which was slated for development by a Disney family trust. (The developer sold its 662 acres for a total of $19.8 million, but most of the cost was covered by state and county park funds.)

“It’s like we were saving for a Rolls-Royce, but bought a bunch of Cadillacs along the way,” said Dave Brown, a longtime supporter of the conservancy and member of its citizen advisory committee.

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All along, conservancy officials were counting on the passage of Proposition 180, a statewide initiative to raise money for parks and wildlife, to replenish their diminishing reserves. But the measure failed in 1994.

At the same time, state and federal lawmakers began tightening the conservancy’s traditional sources of funding. As other parks agencies saw their own acquisition budgets drop, they were unable to reimburse the conservancy for purchases made on their behalf.

The result: The conservancy was left with too many obligations and not enough money. Edmiston and the conservancy staff began scrambling to find a way out of the condemnation, the first in the agency’s history. And, now, likely its last.

In November 1994, the conservancy and its sister agency, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, considered a settlement offer in which Soka would share its property with parks agencies and be allowed to build a 2,400-student campus. The deal died after angry residents, environmentalists and elected officials complained that such intensive development would spoil the heart of the mountain parks.

Soon after, Soka unveiled plans to build a campus in the Orange County community of Aliso Viejo, a move that school spokesman Jeff Ourvan acknowledged was prompted by resistance at every turn in Calabasas.

The Orange County campus took some of the development pressure off the Calabasas site, and over the past year the school and the conservancy have been negotiating an amicable settlement to the condemnation suit. For Soka, the settlement more or less guarantees it will be granted development permits by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for its 650-student campus.

If it is not, under the terms of the settlement, the conservancy will have to pay Soka all the legal costs incurred by the school in fighting the condemnation. The agreement also requires the conservancy to support Soka’s plans during public hearings.

In the two weeks since the proposal was unveiled, some park advocates have bemoaned the deal as a loss for the public. In the November 1994 deal, they complain, the conservancy would have taken control of the historic King Gillette estate--the perfect spot for a visitors center. But in the current proposal, the public park area is limited to fairly inaccessible mountain land--good as open space and wildlife corridors, but not so good as parkland.

Yet it was always clear over the years that some members of the community around Soka did not really want the campus to be a public park. In private conversations, many newer residents admitted that all they wanted was for the university to be small enough to be unnoticeable.

The public itself bears a degree of responsibility for tonight’s settlement, say conservancy members, parks officials and even some residents. Although Edmiston and the conservancy have been lambasted regularly merely for considering a settlement, almost no public action has been taken to prevent it. In one of the wealthiest communities in Los Angeles County, not a dime has been raised over the past three years to support the conservancy’s legal battle.

By contrast, Santa Barbara residents this year raised about $2.5 million in six weeks to help buy a 69-acre property overlooking an ocean bluff.

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Tonight, as residents line up to criticize the conservancy, a group of landowners are expected to line up with their hands out. Owners of property along the Backbone Trail said they will ask that the conservancy pay them with any money saved by the Soka settlement.

In 1992, the conservancy expanded the trail by buying dozens of parcels from landowners with just 10% down, promising the rest this year. But last month, the conservancy asked for a federal bailout to help pay for the parcels, on which it faces default.

Property-rights advocate Ty Sisson said the landowners should be the conservancy’s top priority. But Edmiston said it is unlikely that any money will soon be spent, because the conservancy faces a series of legal expenses that could gobble up most of the Soka savings.

First, the conservancy may end up paying Soka’s legal bills for the condemnation if the Board of Supervisors rejects the campus expansion. (A hearing date has yet to be set.) Second, the conservancy is appealing an $11.2-million judgment awarded to a developer who successfully sued the agency over land around Westlake Reservoir.

“People shouldn’t be lining up with their hands outstretched,” said Liz Cheadle, chairwoman of the executive board. “It looks like we’ve survived the waterfall, but there are rapids ahead.”