Ahmanson Still Faces Big Hurdles

Nearly 10 years and 15 lawsuits have passed since the Ahmanson Land Co. first proposed a billion-dollar, 3,050-home community where Ventura County meets Los Angeles County.

The last of the lawsuits was settled earlier this month. And the real estate market has finally rebounded, with analysts noting a severe shortage of homes in eastern Ventura County.

But don’t expect the bulldozers to begin rolling soon.

The developer must first secure property from a nearby landowner--entertainer Bob Hope--and set it aside as open space.

But environmental groups are planning to launch a new line of legal assaults focusing on possible radioactive and chemical contamination from Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Lab, just two miles away.

Also, the development’s design and location in an area of steep mesas and rugged mountains have some familiar with the project questioning whether the company’s parent, Home Savings of America, will ever be able to make it work.

“While it’s a beautiful piece of land, it’s difficult to develop,” Calabasas environmental coordinator Steve Craig said of the area’s formidable topography. “To say the least, it would be expensive and personally, the way [the plan] is right now, I’d be amazed if it ever got built.”

Some builders interested in the project have yet to commit, concerned the plans call for too much shopping space in an already glutted corridor and would involve too much work to move as much as 54 million cubic yards of earth, sources close to the project said.

Ahmanson officials, however, are confident the proposed mini-city will become a reality, and project completion by 2010.

“We’ve certainly made some progress and feel the situation is better now than it’s been in the past,” said Mary Trigg, spokeswoman for Home Savings of America.

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Such challenges are nothing new for the Ahmanson project, which has been called everything from a godsend for a region desperately short of housing to the epitome of uncontrolled urban sprawl.

The 5,443-acre Ahmanson Ranch is in a corner of Ventura County--east of Thousand Oaks and Oak Park, south of Simi Valley. The nearest cities, however, are Calabasas and Woodland Hills in Los Angeles County. And all the traffic--about 37,540 car trips each day--would be routed through Los Angeles County.

As proposed, the 8.5-square-mile project would include 400,000 square feet of commercial space, a spacious community center, a 300-room hotel and two championship golf courses.

The development would rest on about 2,800 acres with the remainder, about 2,600 acres, dedicated to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

For Ventura County, the project is essentially a mixed bag: It promises millions more dollars in tax revenue and thousands of new homes. It also would mean more demands on local schools, sewer and water services, as well as threats to the environment.

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For Los Angeles, however, residents see only negatives: the dust that years of construction would bring, and the traffic that would be sure to follow.

Criticism runs the spectrum from concerns on the loss of the undeveloped buffer between the San Fernando and Conejo valleys to fantastic assertions that the area is a landing zone for alien spacecraft.

On both sides of the county line, the project has proved a crucible of controversy.

After the Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved the master plan in 1992, a flurry of lawsuits began.

Environmental groups sued the developer and appealed to the state Supreme Court before acknowledging defeat. Calabasas sued the Ventura County board to no avail.

Ahmanson sued the city of Calabasas in a dispute over road improvements--and dropped the suits two weeks ago after agreeing to pay more than $1.3 million.

A few details remain: To proceed, the developer must still receive permission from Los Angeles County to extend Victory Boulevard into the project. And builders must bring subdivision plans back before Ventura County supervisors.

But before then, some believe the project could collapse under its own weight, with builders skittish over its economic feasibility.

“A number of parties involved with the project have serious questions as to whether it works at all,” a source close to Ahmanson said. “It’s a very complex project and there are certain elements within the plan that have raised a lot of questions as to whether it can even be built.”

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Specifically, builders have reportedly questioned the project’s sheer size, the amount of work required to prepare the land for development and plans to have upward of 400,000 square feet of commercial space.

Sources said potential developers, while interested in the project, would prefer to see the number of homes scaled back and more emphasis placed on Ahmanson Ranch’s resort aspects.

“It appears that the project will need some revisions before they get any commitments from builders,” a source said.

Ahmanson officials, however, have denied any hitches and say they are still on schedule for a tentative 2010 completion date.

“Nothing’s been said that would indicate that there’s a problem with the project,” Home Savings of America spokeswoman Trigg said. “And while I can’t comment on the nature of the discussions, I can say they are proceeding.”

If the project is completed as planned, nearly 12,000 new residents could move into that corner of Ventura County. But they would travel through Los Angeles County to get there.

Studies conducted on the project anticipate that if built, Ahmanson would add an additional 37,540 daily trips to the surrounding street system.

Most of the traffic would use Victory Boulevard, Las Virgenes Road, sections of Kanan Road, Valley Circle Boulevard, Chesebro Road and the Ventura Freeway.

“Of all the problems with Ahmanson, traffic is probably the most serious,” said Craig, the Calabasas environmental coordinator. “Roads around there aren’t ready for the traffic and I haven’t seen anything that tells me that’s going to be fixed.”

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Charles Alpert, president of the Mountain View Estateowners Assn., said residents continue to be concerned about the amount of traffic the project would produce.

“We’ll lose the tranquillity in that area,” he said. “There’s just going to be horrendous traffic that will move through there. . . . Hopefully, Ahmanson will see the light and seriously downsize their project in order to maintain the concept of open space and quality of life.”

In Ventura County, a chief concern is local schools, which could receive 1,800 new students. That would increase enrollment at the tiny Oak Park Unified School District by more than 50%.

Although the developer has agreed to build two elementary schools, the school district would have to absorb the middle school and high school students into three existing schools.

To mitigate those impacts, the builders will pay the district additional money for each house built.

“We were real happy with the agreement,” Oak Park Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt said. “It doesn’t look like it will have any negative impacts, and when it happens we’ll be prepared.”

That 1992 agreement, however, may need further refinement because of the state’s class-size reduction initiative.

Among the loudest critics have been environmentalists, who believe the development will not only destroy existing wildlife habitats, but also pose a threat to existing residents of the area.

Because of the property’s hills and steep mountains, more than 54 million cubic yards of dirt will have to be graded to make it developable.

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Studies project that extensive grading would produce as much as 20,000 tons of dust, which would blanket surrounding communities and pose potential health problems for residents.

Added to that, opponents fear if the soil is contaminated with radioactive and chemical materials discharged from more than 30 years of nuclear and rocket testing at the Rocketdyne site, the health problems could be catastrophic.

“The fact that they’re going to have to move about 70 Rose Bowls’ worth of dirt is alarming enough, but if there’s something wrong with the soil, there’s going to be major problems,” said Mary Weisbrock, president of Save Open Space, a leading critic of the project. “No one knows what’s there and it’s important for everybody, even the people Ahmanson wants to move in, to know what’s there.”

Ahmanson officials said they have already tested the soil and have concluded that radioactive contamination should not be a concern.

“We studied the environment extensively and don’t feel that anything’s changed,” Trigg said. “We don’t feel there’s a problem, but we are continuing to monitor the area.”

While Ahmanson maintains the soils are indeed safe, low-level radioactive and chemical contamination from the Rocketdyne facility was detected in 1991 in ground-water supplies near the Brandeis-Bardin Jewish Cultural Center in Simi Valley. Also, neighbors in communities around the lab have filed a suit alleging property value losses because of the contamination.

Officials at Rocketdyne were unavailable for comment but have said repeatedly there is no cause for concern.

Weisbrock said she and her group will soon file suit against Rocketdyne, Home Savings of America and possibly Ventura County to conduct the necessary soils test.

Environmentalists are also entering the political arena, running a candidate for the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

Conservationist and longtime Ahmanson critic Vince Curtis plans to run against Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo in next June’s primary.

“I don’t have many problems with the development itself, but if you look at this deal, it’s a win-win situation for Home Savings and that’s why it should be stopped or at least amended,” Curtis said. “They haven’t spent one penny on land acquisition, it’s you and me that have.”

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Times correspondent Sylvia Oliande contributed to this report.