Saving Your Land and Making a Profit, Too

It’s a rough ride across the 3,500 acres of rolling hills that Steve Lyons wants to save from developers. You need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to manage the narrow, rutted road, a dirt track long abandoned by Santa Barbara County.

There’s coyote scat under an oak tree and there are road runners near the creek. California quail live in the underbrush, red-tailed hawks patrol the skies and, at dusk, bobcats and great horned owls set out on silent hunts.

Left to development, the land could be carved and carved again into dozens of ranchettes and view estates. But Lyons got there first.

Working with the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, he found a way to limit growth on the property and still make a profit when he sells. Like a growing number of other investors, Lyons bought the land to preserve it and to help others learn to do the same.

“I never in my life thought I’d own something like this,” he said, carefully easing his dusty red pickup down a steep stretch of road. A former teacher at Crenshaw High School, he left the classroom to run his own business.

“I love being out in the natural world, in all this open space,” Lyons said. “You think better, and you feel better too.”

His passion for the land led him to a strategy that, if all goes as planned, will shrink the number of parcels into which the Purisima Hills ranch can be divided from the 25 that zoning allows to five. A conservation easement--a permanent deed restriction to prevent harmful land uses--will be sold to the Land Trust.

The idea hinges on the belief that like-minded conservationists, eager to own pieces of old California and affluent enough to eschew subdividing for profit, will buy the five parcels. The development agreement allows a buyer to build a house and outbuildings on each 500- to 800-acre home site, to add roads and to farm the land. But the kind of intense development that has gobbled up open space throughout Southern California will be prohibited.

“This is a classic Land Trust case, and Steve is what we refer to as a conservation buyer,” said Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County. “He’s interested in seeing the land kept open, and he’s in a position to take advantage of some of the tax exemptions involved in something like this.”

Santa Barbara’s Land Trust and Lyons have agreed to share the cost of the conservation easement, which totals $1.8 million. The nonprofit group, one of 1,200 such land conservancy groups throughout the United States, has applied for a variety of grants to cover its $900,000 share.

Lyons, a 20-year resident of Santa Barbara, will get a federally mandated tax break for his half of the $1.8 million cost. The law allows deductions for charitable gifts or for the bargain sale of real property.

“It’s a business proposition,” said Lyons, 54, who rejects the notion that his plan is selfless or visionary. “I saw a way to make money and at the same time protect the land.”

Land trusts go back 100 years in California. The first, the Sempervirens Fund, preserved 3,500 acres of redwoods near Santa Cruz. Now known as Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the sanctuary totals 19,000 acres.

More than 1,200 land trusts operate throughout the United States, a 63% increase since 1983. The organizations offer information and resources to anyone interested in preserving a piece of land.

The same wave of prosperity that has fueled a nationwide building boom has put money in the pockets of conservationists. And although buying great chunks of land in Southern California is now possible only for the very rich, nationwide, land trusts rely on donations by people from the entire economic spectrum.

“People from all sorts of communities are working to save everything from thousands of acres of forest, to tiny city lots,” said Martha Nudel, spokeswoman for the Washington-based Land Trust Alliance. “This is the fastest-growing movement in the conservation field.”

But it couldn’t work without buyers.

Michael Klein, chief executive of the Internet mail provider eGroups, is one of those buyers.

A Santa Barbara resident for 25 years, Klein jumped at the chance to purchase the 1,100-acre San Roque Ranch. An 880-acre conservation easement erased development rights from six parcels. Klein is left with the right to build on three remaining parcels, which total 220 acres.

“The San Roque Ranch is the last bastion of undeveloped land in Santa Barbara,” Klein said. “It would be a shame to cover those mountains with a lot of houses.”

He also donated $100,000 to help the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County spread the conservation message.

“Some people look at a piece of land and see a way to make money, but I think the argument can be made that conservation makes good business sense,” Klein said. “You protect the plants and you protect the animals, and it’s good for the city to have such a pristine piece of land nearby.”