In This Case, Conservancy Is Wise to Save Cash, Not Land

At first glance, the land seems like a natural piece of wild parkland--36 acres tucked hard along the boundary of Topanga State Park and reachable only by a three-mile stretch of dirt road. So when bulldozers started moving in to make room for four homes in the hills south of Tarzana, neighbors cried foul and called on the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to save the day and buy the land as it has many times in the past.

To their credit, conservancy officials resisted. They should continue to stand firm. While such a position might seem anathema to an agency charged with acquiring parkland and protecting natural open spaces, it represents a maturation of the conservancy as it struggles to deal with ever greater demands on its ever dwindling dollars. It has learned--often through costly mistakes--that caving in to the bulldozer diplomacy of developers and the pleas of neighboring residents rarely serves the greater environmental or recreational good.

Los Angeles County planning officials approved the development, known as Rancho Estates, during the height of the building boom in 1989--even though the property can be reached only via the unpaved portion of Mulholland Drive. But then the recession struck and knocked the building industry into a tailspin. The site went untouched. Earlier this year, though, bulldozers showed up because development rights were in danger of expiring unless work began.

In March, neighbors protested and asked the conservancy to step in. Through his lawyer, the developer himself began an intensive lobbying campaign to persuade the conservancy to buy him out, but at a prohibitively expensive price--about $2.5 million. Although the property is considered a high-priority acquisition for the conservancy, so are dozens of other pieces of land available at a fraction of the cost asked for Rancho Estates. No one disputes that the property would make a nice addition to Topanga State Park. But is it worth the price?

The answer, flatly, is no.

Last year, Los Angeles County voters approved Proposition A, a parks bond that earmarks nearly $18 million for the Santa Monica Mountains. That sounds like a lot, but it really doesn’t go very far when trying to cobble together property in a wilderness area that stretches from Point Mugu to Griffith Park. If the conservancy bought other land at the price it is being asked to pay for Rancho Estates, the Proposition A funds would buy less than 263 acres. By contrast, the conservancy is mulling a deal to buy 1,000 acres for about the same price as Rancho Estates.

Which is the better deal?

Critics of the conservancy argue that allowing Rancho Estates to proceed would force the paving of Mulholland Drive between Woodland Hills and Encino and open an untouched portion of the Santa Monicas to even greater development pressure. But because Mulholland lies within the limits of Los Angeles, city approval would be necessary for paving. And the city is under no legal obligation to pave the road, or even to allow a private developer to pave it at his own expense.

To be sure, the county’s 1989 decision to allow Rancho Estates was a bad one--the kind of action that earned county planners a reputation for laxity and helped fuel the kind of community frustration that led to cityhood movements in Agoura Hills, Malibu and Calabasas. But it’s not the conservancy’s job to remedy poor planning decisions by buying them off. Its mandate includes protecting wildlife corridors and enhancing recreational use of the Santa Monicas--not acting as the guardian angel for sound regional planning.

Unfortunately, the conservancy itself created its image as a white knight that plucks property from the brink of development. In 1991, it bowed to pressure from a developer and Studio City residents when it paid too much for land in Fryman Canyon. The land was eventually bought by the National Park Service, but it turned out later that the developer’s threats to build on the land were not nearly as serious as everyone thought. And neighbors who rallied to create the park with public money now complain about visitors.

Then in 1995, the conservancy struck a deal to buy Canyon Oaks Estates in Topanga Canyon on the very day Los Angeles County supervisors were set to approve plans to build a gated community and golf course. That deal, while it added 660 acres of public parkland, destroyed the conservancy’s hopes of acquiring Soka University’s campus, long coveted as a centerpiece to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The conservancy has learned lessons from its own history. It can ill afford to cave in at the first threat of bulldozers when it wants more land than it can afford. No one is served by that--save for a developer who walks away with a hefty chunk of public money. Top priorities for the conservancy include finishing the Backbone Trail and acquiring wildlife corridors critical to preserving biological diversity in the mountains.

Rancho Estates was a planning mistake, and it will be a sad day if bulldozers indeed clear the land. But it illustrates the fiscal realities of modern land management. Not every piece of mountain land can be bought and saved as parkland. The decisions over which ones will and which ones won’t should be based more on science and recreational use than on threats from developers and pleas from neighbors.