Judge Blocks Conservancy Plan to Build Public Park

Siding with some local residents and hikers, a judge has ordered the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to halt its $1.2-million plan to convert 17 acres of rugged, undeveloped hillside land into a grassy public park.

Pending extensive environmental studies, work on the park at the southern end of Reseda Boulevard known as Reseda Ridge must stop, Superior Court Judge Frederick J. Lower Jr. ruled Wednesday. Conservancy officials say most of the improvements have been completed and will remain.

But the decision is a victory for Friends of Caballero Canyon, a preservationist group that filed suit to stop the conservancy--which owns the land--from creating picnic areas. The conservancy had planned to carve out trails, plant oak trees and a lawn and install an irrigation system to turn the area into an attractive public park.

The group argued that such changes would be out of character with the surrounding hillsides and would go far beyond the scope of a more modest improvement plan approved by the conservancy in 1992.

“We applauded the restoration of natural landforms. That was the original idea,” said Tarzana resident Mel Swift, an attorney who volunteered his legal services to Friends of Caballero Canyon. “They’re not only wasting money, but they’re trying to put something from the flatlands up in the mountains where it doesn’t belong.”

But conservancy officials accused Swift’s group of using ecological concerns in a campaign to prevent the state agency from opening up the land to park-goers from outside Tarzana.

“This is an outrageous lawsuit by a willful band of so-called environmentalists who are abusing the term as a method to keep nonresidents out of the area,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director. “We will fight such abuses till our dying breath.”

The original project, dubbed the San Fernando Gateway to Topanga State Park, called for a four-acre parcel in Caballero Canyon dotted with a ranger’s cabin, picnic area, educational kiosks and indigenous chaparral.

Through additional grants, the $175,000 project subsequently grew to include more land until the conservancy arrived at its current plans, which envision 300 to 500 more trees than initially allotted and a sod lawn watered by a permanent irrigation system.

In his ruling, Lower said the impact of such additions had not been adequately studied.

“At minimum, [the conservancy] should have conducted a preliminary review in order to determine whether they should prepare an environmental information document,” Lower wrote. “Having failed to do this, they must do so before completing the project.”

Although the project could ultimately be completed, the environmental studies are likely to cause delays of months if not years, to the delight of Swift and his group.

“They have to obey the law, like everybody else,” Swift said. “It hopefully will be an example to slow down other state agencies which just go in and try to destroy something.”