Reprieve Won for 290 Tarzana Trees

Construction crews planning to cut down a stand of rare and mature trees on land once owned by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate have been asked to put down their chain saws so city planners can take a second look at the project, officials said Wednesday.

The Tarzana Property Owners Assn. pressed for the work delay in an attempt to save some 290 trees from being removed for a new development at the site along Tarzana Drive between Mecca Avenue and Avenida Oriente south of Ventura Boulevard.

Although not legally obligated to safeguard any of the trees except the oaks, the developer, Manhattan Holding Co. of Long Beach, has agreed to halt work until the issue was resolved.

“Our office as well as the city Planning Department is doing tremendous research into this case and the applicant is being extremely cooperative,” said Lisa Levy, a spokeswoman for City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heard neighbors’ complaints Tuesday and requested the project review.

Residents said they were outraged when they learned that the developer intended to uproot trees to make room for 30 single-family homes at the 18-acre site.

“This is scandalous,” said Helen Itria Norman, president of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn. “This is mowing down history and eliminating the character of Tarzana.”

Norman said she first heard that the developer was ready to move forward with plans to remove the trees while she was planting trees along Ventura Boulevard on Sunday.

News that chain saws would soon be ripping through trees planted between 1910 and 1912 by Los Angeles Times’ founder Harrison Gray Otis quickly spread among homeowners.

Association members met Monday night and agreed to inundate Miscikowski’s office with phone calls and faxes asking her to intervene. By Tuesday morning, the councilwoman had won a 24-hour reprieve for the trees. By Wednesday, the developer had said he would not proceed until further review.

On Wednesday morning, Norman and association members Susanne Belcher and Joe Quercia walked a heavily wooded lot adjacent to the development site and lamented the possible removal of aged coast redwoods, coast live oaks, beef wood, sequoia sempervirens and other rare trees.

“Can you imagine replacing a 100-year-old . . . tree with a 10-foot sapling?” Norman asked. “We are totally dismayed.”

Another resident said that developing the open space would upset the area’s ecological balance.

“That whole area is a nesting place for a lot of birds, some of which are predators that keep the rodent population in check,” said Michael Belcher, Susanne’s husband. “We don’t know what the overall effect will be, but everyone seems to acknowledge that this will have an impact on the environment.”

Residents say they were caught off-guard by the developer’s plans to begin clearing the area this week because their last contact with Manhattan Holding executives was in January 1997.

Although company president Robert Davis acknowledged that his last communication with homeowners was more than two years ago, he said it wasn’t because he was trying to keep anything from them.

“They haven’t heard from us because it has taken us two years to go through the mapping process,” Davis said. “We notified the councilman’s office and the planning agency that we were ready to go forward with the plan. There was nothing on our part that was hidden in any way.”

Company executives spent four years meeting with residents, making presentations at public hearings and keeping development plans on view at the council office, Davis said.

Additionally, the company agreed to widen Tarzana Drive and plant 65 new trees along a median strip as well as others on the property.