Ahmanson Ranch Adds 14 Feet to Road

The developers of Ahmanson Ranch said Wednesday that work has been completed on a 14-foot extension of Las Virgenes Road, bringing them closer to creating a major road system to the controversial, though unapproved, development.

The construction work took a day and a half last week, and the road now connects the city of Calabasas to the Ventura County line, although it will be closed to the public as long as the development is in question, said Mary Triggs, spokeswoman for Home Savings of America, owners of the land.

Steven Harris, Calabasas’ director of community development, said Ahmanson Land Co. was granted an encroachment permit in late July after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the city was required to meet the permit request.

The court decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by Ahmanson Land Co. last year, after the Calabasas City Council and Planning Commission said the company’s permit application was incomplete. The agencies had requested that Ahmanson Land file for a conditional-use permit and conduct an environmental impact review of the proposal.

Harris said the judge ruled that the extension was not technically a project and therefore did not require an environmental document.

Mary Weisbrock, head of the environmental group Save Open Space, said she heard about the road earlier this week and was surprised to see that the work had already begun.

“People were going down to Las Virgenes, looking at that road, and saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ ”

The proposed development of more than 3,000 homes, a golf course and commercial space abutting the western boundary of Los Angeles County has touched off several other lawsuits and environmental protests in the area since the Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved the project in 1992 without regard, according to critics, to the traffic impacts to neighboring Los Angeles County.