Innovation Is the Key

A flower thought to be extinct for nearly 60 years has miraculously reappeared--right in the path of the controversial Ahmanson Ranch development.

Will it kill the project, as a decade of protests and a dozen lawsuits have failed to do? Not likely. But it will certainly delay it, as those same protests and lawsuits have succeeded in doing.

A field of 5,000 to 10,000 spineflowers was found late last month by a team of scientists commissioned by the developer to catalog the property’s flora and fauna. The flowers were found on the southern slope of the Laskey Mesa, where developers plan to locate more than 650 homes and a country club.

Four juvenile red-legged frogs were also found in the property’s wetland area.

Ahmanson officials said they had forwarded information about the discoveries to various federal, state and county authorities but that it is too early to speculate on how the finds could affect the development. A spokesman said the company will pursue the project in the most environmentally sensitive manner available.

Project opponents, however, vowed to demand a new environmental impact report.

The spineflower was last seen in 1940, growing on a hillside in the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley, biologists say. It was thought to have been a victim of uncontrolled sprawl that paved over the Valley. The field of flowers was found on a portion of land that the developer had planned to build on first, beginning in the summer of 2001.

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

* The same deal that cleared the way for the 2,800-acre project also guaranteed the public nearly 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 between two already populated areas in Los Angeles County: Calabasas and Los Angeles.

* Ahmanson Ranch would follow 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. All dwellings would be laid out within walking distance of shopping areas, unlike the standard mansions-on-fairways model.

Whatever the outcome of this latest chapter of the Ahmanson Ranch saga, in these ways the project exemplifies the kind of creative planning it will take to accommodate Southern California’s growing population in the least harmful way.