Big Tujunga Golf Course Wins OK on 2nd Vote

In a stunning reversal, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to approve a golf course development in the Big Tujunga Wash, one of the city’s last remaining wilderness areas and the last place in the city where a major river runs freely.

The action caps a decade-long fight that pitted government, private environmentalists and labor unionists against a mammoth Japanese development firm with interests in the project.

Council members said they came to the decisive 10-4 vote, reversing a decision from last July, because Deputy City Atty. Michael Klekner had advised that taxpayers would probably be held liable for illegally taking the property if the development had been denied.

“Finally what should have happened has happened,” said Florida developer David Hueber, principal of Foothills Golf Development Group, after the vote. Hueber’s concern sued the city in October over the council’s previous vote, claiming $215 million in damages.

Opponents were led by William Eick, a local attorney who has worked without fees for years to stop the project. “We are considering our legal options,” he said after the vote.

Eick predicted that, vote or no vote, Hueber will not build a golf course in the wash because its waterways are prone to shifting.

To become law, the council action must be approved by Mayor Richard Riordan. He has not yet decided whether he will, said his spokeswoman, Noelia Rodriguez.

The five council members who changed their vote Tuesday in order to support a modified version of the project were Laura Chick, Richard Alarcon, Michael Feuer, Rita Walters and Cindy Miscikowski.

The vote was the culmination of an 11-year land-use battle over the area surrounding Big Tujunga Wash, a local landmark of rocks and desert plants that stretches northeast of the 210 Freeway.

The 650-acre wash area is home to one of California’s rarest and most fragile plant communities, an ecosystem that thrives on a harsh margin created by frequent floods and blistering droughts. One tiny wildflower that grows there is an endangered species. But the area is also privately owned and zoned to permit golf courses with a conditional-use permit.

Hueber stepped in to lease the property 2 1/2 years ago after a more ambitious golf course proposed by a previous developer was shot down by the federal government because it would further jeopardize the flower. Hueber’s scaled-back course would cover 160 acres and charge golfers an estimated $50 to $75 per round. In his lawsuit after the plan was rejected last summer, Hueber argued that the council had left him no other economically viable use for the property.

Tuesday’s decision to approve the project came after a grueling three-hour hearing at the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center during which several council members appeared to be wavering moment by moment.

Looking on was a throng of local residents, who filled the auditorium’s 400 chairs and lined every wall. Many wore stickers--yellow for supporters, orange for opponents--and the debate was punctuated with cheers and boos from both sides.

Several residents also rose to testify for or against the golf course, invoking El Nino, Native American history and news reports of dead bodies. They read poetry and displayed pictures.

Much of the ensuing council debate was consumed by members grilling Klekner and other deputy city attorneys, seeking to determine how precarious the city’s legal position really was.

Several seemed unsatisfied with the answers; Councilman Nate Holden even strode from the stage at one point to corner Klekner and upbraid him in private.

In the end, the few remaining staunch opponents of the golf course watched with dismay as support slipped away.

“I think this project is going to be approved but I’m not going to vote for it,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said wearily as the council prepared to vote. “Once again, we have failed to preserve wilderness . . . and this is one of the last places to go.”

Wavering council members were appeased by an alternate golf course plan that Councilman Joel Wachs had negotiated with the developer prior to the vote.

Wachs’ compromise strengthened the 62 conditions previously imposed on the developer and added 10 more--including one mandating that 40 additional acres be set aside as open space on the bluffs overlooking the course.

“I’m telling you, if you can’t come up with a better deal than that, then you have got to vote for this proposal. That is the bottom line,” said Wachs, raising his voice in a passionate appeal to his colleagues to reverse their earlier vote.

Ten votes--two-thirds of the council--were needed to stop the project or to accept Wachs’ compromise plan.

Failure to get a two-thirds majority would have meant the final decision would have fallen by default to the city Planning Commission--an outcome viewed with distaste by the council members, since the commission had imposed fewer restrictions on the project.

In the end, Klekner’s opinion that the city would have to condemn the property if it rejected the project--since the property is zoned for golf courses with a conditional-use permit--swayed even some of the most reluctant opponents.

“What has changed for me is not my wish to preserve this area as natural habitat,” said Chick. “But I think our risk is that this will be successfully challenged.”

For Chick, the lawsuit’s claims had a familiar ring. She had used one of the city’s most notorious land-use battles, in which a developer successfully sued the city for blocking the Warner Ridge project, in her election campaign.

Council President John Ferraro and Councilmen Hal Bernson, Rudy Svorinich and Wachs voted in support of the project, as they had previously. Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas was absent for the first vote, and on Tuesday voted in favor of the golf course.

Tuesday’s debate was watched carefully by David Koff, senior research analyst with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. The union has a dispute with Japan-based Kajima International, which has a lien on the wash property. The union had lobbied successfully for the golf course proposal’s defeat last July.

When asked Tuesday why his efforts hadn’t paid off this time, Koff pointed at Klekner and the other deputy city attorneys. “They don’t have the guts,” he said.