Plan for Homes Near Camp Sparks Debate
A proposal to build more than 500 homes in north Glendale has sparked a controversy with a nearby camp for disadvantaged youngsters where officials are concerned about the influx of people and noise into what is now a pristine setting.
For 61 years the 112-acre Camp Max Straus, at the base of the Verdugo Mountains, has shared its vision of nature with urban children, many of whom have medical and emotional problems. It is a vision filled with oak and sycamore trees, acorn woodpeckers and other local wildlife.
But developer Lee Gregg, whose family has been constructing homes in Glendale for 65 years, also has a vision.
On 238 acres of a neighboring ridge, he sees a community of up to 572 upscale houses, which he calls Oakmont View V. He wants to provide housing for workers from corporations such as Nestle and DreamWorks SKG, which have moved to the city during this decade. The employees must often live outside the city, he said, adding: “I’d like to keep those people in Glendale.”
Gregg, vice president of Greggs’ Artistic Homes, insists that his vision does not conflict with the camp’s. But officials of the nonsectarian camp, run by the Jewish Big Brothers of Los Angeles, fear it will destroy the solitude and beauty that characterize the Camp Max Straus experience.
“It’s a devastating project,” said camp director Gabby Leon, who started as a counselor in 1979.
The tension between urban growth and preservation is an ongoing theme of California life. “It’s a trade-off we have to make in every community,” said David Dale-Johnson, director of the real estate program at USC’s business school. “Home builders, with some justification, feel they are serving an important function--providing housing for growing communities.”
The tension has for the first time pushed officials at the nonprofit camp to take sides in a local controversy. They have joined forces with activists to protest the project and help raise money to buy the Oakmont property to preserve it as open space.
The Glendale City Council must approve the project, which could take five to 15 years to complete. “The council hasn’t made a determination as to how many homes can be put up there,” said Councilman Gus Gomez, who supports preserving open space in Glendale. “That’s where the real battle might take place. I want to listen to everything before I make a final decision on it.”
Any council decision is months away, but the debate in Glendale is already hot. “The velocity of the attack and the defense is a little astonishing, on both sides,” said Mayor Ginger Bremberg.
Gregg contends that camp officials “honestly misperceive what the impact is going to be.” He said the camp is already bordered by homes in the Oakmont Woods community built in the 1950s and ‘60s.
He said potential buyers of the Oakmont homes, who are unable to find new houses elsewhere in Glendale, are already expressing interest in the project. His firm received more than 100 calls from people asking when the homes would be ready after he mailed them promotional brochures this summer, he said.
Unconvinced, the camp has allied itself with those who advocate preservation of open space, such as Volunteers Organized in Conserving the Environment, or VOICE, and the Sierra Club, to galvanize opposition to the project.
The conservation group’s chairman is a director of Jewish Big Brothers and has led the cooperation between the two groups. The camp has held four training sessions for activists in the last 18 months, and hosted a September meeting about Oakmont that drew an estimated 350 residents, Leon said.
Named after a Chicago merchant whose $10,000 bequest allowed the Jewish Big Brothers to purchase 32 acres in the Verdugos in 1938, the camp initially served fatherless Jewish boys who were matched with Jewish mentors. But as it grew in size by buying neighboring lots, the camp began to serve boys, and in the 1980s, girls, from all religious and ethnic backgrounds. It also accepted those with physical and emotional disabilities who were not admitted by other organizations.
Last summer, 877 7- to 13-year-olds attended one- and two-week sessions at the camp. Social service agencies such as the county Department of Children and Family Services and the mental health division of the Los Angeles Unified School District referred some of them. Nearly four out of five families who send children to the camp live below the federal poverty level and receive financial help for the fees, said services Director Dinah Weldon.
Justin Chapman, 16, attended Camp Max Straus for eight years at the suggestion of a family counselor. He said the close attention counselors paid to campers has spurred him to plan for a career in child and family psychology. He wants to return to the camp next summer as a cook or a ranch hand feeding camp animals.
“I want to spread the joy that they gave me,” he said, even if he has to “do the dirty stuff.”
The camp reached an agreement in the 1950s with the original developers of the Oakmont Woods homes that now border its southern rim, said Milton L. Goldberg, who retired in 1989 after 45 years as the camp’s director. The camp swapped property with neighbors, gaining a ranch now used to keep horses and other animals, he said. Most of these homes are at the same elevation as the camp’s main buildings, and are largely screened by trees.
Homes in the new development would rise up along a hillside, now covered with chaparral and oak and laurel trees, visible prominently from the camp headquarters.
Effects of the Oakmont project could be harmful, the people who run the camp say.
Leon, the camp director, said dust and noise from the construction could irritate and distract campers, some of whom suffer from asthma or attention deficit disorder.
Crews would routinely water building sites to keep graded areas moist and prevent dust from entering the air, Gregg countered. “They’re not experts in construction,” he said of camp officials. “There’s a high fear factor running that’s not justified by the facts.”
Yet even if precautions are taken during building, groups that rent Camp Max Straus for retreats, such as the Amie Karen Cancer Fund, may choose to go elsewhere to escape populated areas, said Bob Chandler, the camp’s director of finance. If the groups leave, the camp’s budget could take a hit--Jewish Big Brothers earned nearly $69,000 from rent in 1998, which would cover about 6% of Camp Max Straus’ $1.17 million in annual expenses.
When the draft environmental impact report is released late next month, conservation group activists will encourage Glendale residents to file their objections to the development. The Sierra Club is spending $25,000 over the next four months for a publicity campaign, said local chapter chairman Fred Dong, also a director of the conservation group.
Activists hope the property is sold to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that has secured $5 million to help pay for the property. But Gregg has said that the property is not for sale, and that it would be far more expensive to buy than the conservancy believes. Rorie Skei, a conservancy official, counters that the agency has reached agreements over similar properties before.
