Tujunga Wash Golf Plan Gets a 2nd Chance

The Los Angeles City Council’s opposition to a controversial golf course proposal for Big Tujunga Wash softened Tuesday after city attorneys struck a deal with the developer to allow reconsideration of the project.

In interviews Tuesday, eight of the City Council members who voted against the 18-hole golf course last year said they remain opposed, but three said they are waiting to hear new information and might change their votes.

But several of the council’s 15 members also said that their opposition depends on the city attorney’s assessment of how much it might cost the city if developers continue to press their case in court.

If the city is liable for compensating the developer for “taking” the property, as supporters of the project allege, “we are boxed in,” said City Councilwoman Laura Chick. The developer has sued the city, claiming $215 million in damages.

Chick said she still opposes the project for environmental reasons, but said the city can’t afford to pay out tax dollars to save Big Tujunga Wash.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, one of the 10 who voted against the project last year, said he plans to vote for it now.

“I’m not going to spend city money to take care of this,” Alatorre said.

Foothills Golf Development Group filed a lawsuit against the city in October, alleging the council’s July decision to block the project constituted a taking of the property and violated the U.S. Constitution.

The city reached a deal with Foothills Golf on Monday to reconsider the issue, said Deputy City Atty. Michael Klekner.

Neither side has admitted liability in the deal, and Klekner said the council retains the authority to reject the golf course a second time.

But he said fighting Foothills Golf may not be worth the legal cost. “Something that is defensible and something worth litigating is often two different questions,” said Klekner. “It’s often in the interest of everyone not to go to the barricades.”

Klekner said opponents of the golf course and the developer will have an opportunity to submit new evidence and potentially strengthen their cases at a new hearing.

Foothills Golf will use the opportunity provided by the reconsideration to present additional arguments to show that a smaller project would not be economically viable, said Ed Casey, a lawyer for the developer.

The council could reject the project again or reverse its earlier action and approve it, Klekner said. Or, a compromise could emerge in which the project would be approved with additional conditions and restrictions, he said.

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Alatorre was the only former opponent to say outright that he is considering changing his vote.

Other former opponents, including council members Cindy Miscikowski, Rita Walters and Richard Alarcon, said they are waiting for the city attorney’s report on the settlement before deciding how to vote.

Opposition remains strong from council members Jackie Goldberg, Nate Holden, Ruth Galanter, Michael Feuer and Mike Hernandez, who said he is even more concerned about the environmental effects of the project now, given the recent heavy rains.

Councilman Joel Wachs, in whose district the wash lies, and who was among four council members to vote in favor of the project, said that the city attorneys “have said all along that they felt there’s a risk of liability” in the case.

Wachs said Foothills Golf had made significant concessions to environmentalists, including promising to set aside more than 190 acres of the 350-acre site as a preserve.

However, environmentalists who have fought the development for years continue to argue that the city was on solid legal ground when it rejected Foothills Golf’s proposal.

Big Tujunga Wash is the last large natural wash spilling down from the San Gabriel Mountains into the Los Angeles Basin.

Its barren, rocky expanse contains one of the rarest ecosystems in the world, a collection of plants and animals whose existence is dependent on periodic flooding, preservationists say. These species thrive on the fierceness of the wash: its extremes of heat, its lack of nutrients and its scouring floods.

Developers have tried for years to build a golf course there. An earlier proposal by another developer for a pricey, championship course that would have required covering the wash’s pebble-filled channels with concrete fell victim to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which determined it would have jeopardized endangered species.

Foothills Golf has scaled back the project to reduce its environmental impact. The current plan would leave the channels undisturbed, set aside areas for wildlife and cost much less to build.

Kathy Anthony of the Sunland/Tujunga Chamber of Commerce is among local residents who back the project. “I think it’s wonderful they are reconsidering it,” she said. The golf course “will be an asset to the community. . . . It will be beautiful,” she said.

But it is opposed by the California Department of Fish and Game, the Sierra Club, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other groups.

The project would wipe out the most mature stands of native vegetation on the site and preserve only the least productive sections, said Paul Edelman, a biologist for the conservancy.

The rare plants in the wash, such as the endangered slender-horned spineflower, cling to life in such marginal conditions that reducing their natural habitat would result in a slow decline in their populations, Edelman said. “The spineflower would, over time, dwindle and eventually poop out,” he said. “There is no other place like this in the city.”

Other opponents, such as William Eick of the Shadow Hills Homeowners Assn., question the wisdom of building a golf course in a flood plain. Eick argues that the project would harm water quality because the rocky wash acts as a natural sieve, filtering water that ends up as part of underground drinking-water stores.

Wachs has contended that it was not these environmental considerations that defeated the project, but rather the intense lobbying efforts by Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.

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The union has had a long-running dispute with Kajima International, a Japanese-owned firm that has an interest in the wash property.

“Maybe some people think it’s appropriate to spend tax money to curry favor with the unions, but I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Wachs said.

Others on the council reject the contention that the union quarrel with the company was a factor in the earlier decision. The union did, however, take an active role in backing the coalition of environmental groups, state agencies and neighborhood groups opposed to the golf course.

The union plans to be just as involved in lobbying as the council reconsiders its decision, promised David Koff, a senior research analyst for the union.

Koff said the union’s involvement is part of a wider strategy to boost union influence. “This is not a labor issue, it’s a quality-of-life issue,” he said.

Told that some on the council had suggested the union might withdraw its opposition, having made its point in the first vote, Koff laughed. “I wouldn’t bet a penny on that,” he said.