Golf Course Battle May Move From City Hall to Courtroom

A Los Angeles City Council decision to bar development of a golf course on the banks of the Big Tujunga Wash is expected to set off a legal battle that could result in the city buying the land or allowing the project to be built after all, according to lawyers familiar with the issues.

Several private land-use attorneys who have followed the case believe the golf course developer has a good chance of beating the city in court if a lawsuit is filed--as expected.

“The city has the right to say that the land should be an open reserve, but then the city has to pay for it,” said George Lefcoe, a USC land-use professor and former president of the city Planning Commission.

The council voted 10 to 4 Tuesday to reject a request for permits to create an 18-hole golf course on 352 acres alongside the wash, which is home to the endangered slender-horned spineflower.

Although the project had received the approval of the Planning Commission and the council member for the area involved--which usually assures council approval--several council members argued that the development would ruin one of the last remaining wildlife habitats in Southern California.

But other council members were swayed by the opposition of an influential labor union local. The union is in a dispute with Kajima International, a corporation that holds a lien on the land where the golf course would be built. It opposes giving Kajima any chance of profiting from construction there.

Mark Armbruster, a lawyer for the developer, Foothill Golf Development Group, said Foothill was “shocked” at the council’s decision and is considering a lawsuit.

“I expect they will act sooner rather than later,” he said.

If the developer and landowner sue, they will probably rely on the argument that the council’s decision has deprived them of an “economically beneficial” use of the land.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that a municipality can be found liable for “taking” a parcel if the landowner is denied “all economically beneficial uses” of the land.

Several attorneys who have followed the case said the developer has a good chance of winning such a lawsuit but it will ultimately be up to a judge to decide how to resolve the case.

Lefcoe said the developer appears to have a strong case because the council indicated that it would not approve any project at all on that site, leaving the property idle.

“When a city turns down a golf course proposal, which is open space, they really look like they won’t approve anything,” he said.

Robert Scott, president of the city Planning Commission, said his panel unanimously approved the golf project partly because any other development would have created more problems for the neighborhood.

“Anything else would be less likable than a golf course because almost everything else would bring in more density, more traffic,” he said.

The 352-acre parcel is marked by a hodgepodge of zoning designations, which has only exacerbated the dispute. Most of the property is zoned for agricultural uses, which permits the construction of between 70 and 156 single-family homes, depending on the development and the exact zoning.

The land also has two other designations: as an ecologically sensitive area and for rock and gravel mining.

Prior to 1986, a landowner had considered using the property to build single-family homes, a commercial strip and an industrial park.

Land-use attorney Hodge Dolle agreed that the developer has a strong case on which to sue because it appears that the developer has tried to reduce the impacts of the project as much as possible.

“They seem to have a pretty good case,” he said. “They seem to have done everything they could have done.”

But Jan Brown, an attorney for Small Wilderness Area Preservation, argued that the developer has not been deprived of the use of the property because a smaller golf course--say nine holes--might still be built.

Armbruster said the developer has already studied that alternative and determined that a nine-hole course would operate at a $2.6-million-a-year loss, making it financially unfeasible.

The city does not have to ensure that a landowner makes a profit on a parcel but must not keep the owner from getting a fair return on the land, the lawyers agreed. What is fair would be up to a judge to decide, taking into account how much the land is worth and the financial returns similar parcels are making.

“That is something the judge will have to wrestle with,” said Les Pinchuk, an assistant city attorney who has worked on other land-taking cases for the city.

Dolle agreed. “If these people bought the property for a dollar, you can put a hot dog stand on the land and it would be considered an economically viable use. But I doubt they paid a dollar for it.”

In fact, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy--a state parklands agency which tried to buy and preserve the land--offered $3.5 million for it and was rebuffed. Armbruster said the land is worth significantly more.

Private attorneys and lawyers for the city say that if a judge rules that the city is guilty of “taking” the golf course site, the judge can require the council to reconsider the project or force the city to pay damages to the developer.

In an extreme case, the judge can make the city buy the land outright at fair market value.

Pinchuk said he has represented the city in two land-taking lawsuits. In one case, the city won. In the other, involving a parcel in Eagle Rock, the city settled with the landowner and agreed to buy the land at a negotiated price.

“It depends on the case,” he said. “If the actions of the council are totally unreasonable, it could give rise to a finding of a regulatory taking.”