Ahmanson Plan Keeps Kicking

Born of an intricate land-swap deal, toughened by the fires of environmental politics and still alive and kicking after nearly 10 years and 15 lawsuits, the Ahmanson Ranch development faces yet another round of obstacles that may be even tougher to surmount: a radiation scare and the vagaries of the Southern California real estate market.

The Times reported last week that some close to the project now question whether the billion-dollar, 3,050-home community will ever be built. The project includes too much shopping space in an already glutted market, they say, and its location amid steep mesas and rugged mountains would require rearranging as much as 54 million cubic yards of possibly polluted dirt. (Parent company Home Savings of America professes not to share those doubts, declaring confidence that the project will indeed be completed by 2010.)

Yet, environmental groups vow new challenges, this time focusing on possible contamination from Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Lab, two miles away. They’re concerned that any contamination could be scattered far and wide when all that grading begins or, even if there is no significant off-site pollution as Rocketdyne asserts, that public perception of a threat could hinder efforts to promote the project.

For all its stormy history and uncertain future, there are several elements about Ahmanson Ranch that make it far superior to many other proposed developments:

* The same deal that green-lighted the 2,800-acre project also guaranteed the public 10,000 acres of open space, including Jordan Ranch and Las Virgenes Canyon, making permanent a substantial buffer between Thousand Oaks and the San Fernando Valley.

* The location, in the extreme southeast corner of Ventura County, is nestled between two already populated areas in Los Angeles County: Calabasas and Los Angeles.

* Ahmanson features an innovative “neotraditional” design with housing for the various income levels likely to be employed there, from large “executive homes” to apartments above shops, backyard “granny flats” and even boarding houses for people who work at the community’s resort hotel or golf courses. All dwellings would be laid out walkably close to shopping areas, unlike the standard mansions-on-fairways model.

Whatever the outcome of the battles over Ahmanson Ranch’s location and environmental impacts, in many ways it exemplifies the kind of creative planning we need to accommodate Southern California’s growing population in the least harmful way.