Pierce Sees Greener Pastures in Golf

For Pierce College, a once-thriving agricultural school crippled in recent years by budget deficits and dwindling enrollment, its acres and acres of green pastures and fallow cropland still hold the promise of plenty.

The bounty envisioned by college officials today, however, is not a plentiful harvest, but a development deal--a plan to lease 240 acres for joint use as an agricultural education center, golf course and driving range.

The proposal to solicit bids for the project, to be voted on today by the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, has met strong community opposition from people horrified by the prospect of developing one of the Valley’s last large open spaces.

“There will never be a golf course on this land,” vowed Gordon Murley, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., which maintained that the land should be used only for educational purposes. “Certainly, we’ll fight it.”

The land at issue encompasses the western side of the Pierce campus in Woodland Hills, stretching from Victory Boulevard to the southern edge of the campus and from De Soto Avenue to Stadium Way on campus. With the exception of the horticultural area, the property includes all the agricultural land at Pierce, said Dudley Campbell, executive director of the Pierce College Foundation. The proposal would not require changing the land’s zoning as open space.

“For the first time in the history of the college, this is a project that has been approved by every governing body,” Campbell said. “It’s unheard of.”

If the plan is likewise approved by the trustees, Pierce stands to gain at least $800,000 annually from the leaseholder, with 10% increases every five years, for 20 years. The resolution before the board states that the income would supplement Pierce’s annual $25-million budget from the district.

College officials stress that the plan would not abolish Pierce’s agricultural program. The terms of the proposed lease require the winning bidder to build Pierce a new agricultural building with three laboratories, eight classrooms and 10 faculty offices.

About 10 potential bidders have expressed interest in the proposed project, Campbell said.

“The trouble is critics are only looking at the nonacademic side,” said Pierce President E. Bing Inocencio, adding that the plan would revitalize the agricultural program.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose district includes the college, earlier this year opposed a plan to develop the land, but she has not taken a position on the latest proposal, said her spokeswoman Kristin Vellandi.

Critics of the proposal object to the educational uses suggested for the golf course and its clubhouse, including academic programs in turf management and culinary arts. They note that Pierce offers the only agricultural curriculum in the community college district and they protest the designation of the land as vacant when there is already a program there.

The college still has cows, horses, pigs, sheep and chickens, but the productive era of the farm has faded and the animals are now mainly used for teaching purposes in veterinary classes, Campbell said.

Margo Murman, president of the Coalition to Save the Farm, a regional group, said that the farm’s decline was due to a lack of support from five college administrations over the past eight years. She said her group wants Pierce to conduct an intensive study of the farm’s potential.

“You simply don’t do this kind of huge land-use change without having investigated more,” Murman said. “It’s going to be a disaster.”

Inocencio, however, has contended that the plan may actually avert a catastrophe at the cash-strapped campus. In a letter he sent to area politicians last Thursday, he cautioned that if the district refuses to accept bids on the land, “the future of the whole college may be in jeopardy.”

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Times staff writer Nancy Hill-Holtzman contributed to this story.