Enter the Lawyers; a Deal Dies

What an irony it is that the Red Tail golf course development is named after the hawks that now soar over Big Tujunga Wash. After the bulldozers have their way, the hawks in this area will exist only on the logos of merchandise sold in the pro shop.

There are other ironies surrounding the recent decision by the city attorney’s office to allow reconsideration of the golf course project, which was voted down by the City Council last year.

As an environmental professional, I have heard from elected officials for years that environmentalists should find common ground with organized labor, that these two great movements of the 20th century should work together instead of falling victim to the jobs versus environment dichotomy.

When labor and environment do join, as they did to oppose Kajima Corp.’s involvement in the Red Tail golf course, we hear from lawyers--the real inheritors of the 20th century--that labor’s concerns are not proper in a land-use debate.

Oddly, when the developers pack the City Council chamber with union members wanting construction jobs, the concerns are considered legitimate. The only common denominators in these otherwise irreconcilable positions are, of course, the wishes of the developers.

No broad brush will do justice to the many City Council members who take seriously their public policy obligations, who read the reports from the Department of Fish and Game and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that the Red Tail golf project would ruin a sensitive habitat and further push nature back into the hills, away from the city, in one of the few places where a unique ecosystem has managed to wind its way between two urban communities, Lake View Terrace and Sunland.

Likewise, Councilman Joel Wachs, representing the folks in Sunland who hope that players at this expensive golf course ($60 a round) will stop off at the local shopping center before whizzing onto the 210 Freeway.

But the issue is not the appropriateness of anyone’s position. The democratic process worked. All issues were debated, public hearing after public hearing was held and, in the end, the common cause of labor and the environment won when the council turned down the project by a 10-4 vote.

This great dialogue on the future of our city was commenced by working men and women who object to what they felt were Kajima’s roughshod tactics, and who were joined by homeowner and environmental groups that were on the verge of a permanent coalition for a better city.

But enter the lawyers. On the assertion that keeping the bulldozers out of Big Tujunga Wash would cost the city $215 million, the damages the developer is seeking for lost profits, the city attorney’s office agreed to march the project back in front of the council so it can be approved.

There was no court hearing. No evidence. No jury trial. The real red tails--the hawks--and every other species in that marvelous alluvial fan ecosystem didn’t get their day in court. In that sense, the environment was convicted without due process.

Observers will note that the city attorney / developer deal to reopen discussion of the project doesn’t actually overturn the council action. But it puts a gun to the council’s head by saying the developer is right.

Was the developer right? No. The golf course requires a conditional-use permit. This is not something given as a matter of right. It is within the discretion of our elected representatives to determine appropriate land use, so long as the developer is not deprived of all economic value of the property. A smaller, nine-hole golf course is possible. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy even identified a 40-acre portion of the property that could be commercially developed without putting a single bulldozer into the fragile habitat.

I live “over the hill” so I have watched the Valley secession debate with interest but no personal involvement. Standing at the edge of the Tujunga Wash recently, watching the rushing waters cut new paths through the alluvial fan just as winter rains have done for hundreds of thousands of years, I got a personal sense of how Valley residents must feel when they look through the Cahuenga Pass and see the spires of downtown skyscrapers. To the forces that built those skyscrapers, the Tujunga Wash will never be more than a place to get off the freeway and play a round of golf.

If the future of the Valley, indeed all of Los Angeles, is treated this way, we had better start naming all of the developments after some creature of nature. Then at least we will have the names to remind us of the nature in our midst that we bulldozed away.