Working to Keep Breathing Space in the L.A. Basin

Shifting into four-wheel drive, conservationist Esther Feldman maneuvered her sport utility vehicle up a steep dirt road and around a closed gate to stop abruptly at the edge of a tangled overlook offering a panorama of Los Angeles.

Here, the Baldwin Hills are punctuated by bobbing oil rigs and giant power lines. Commuter traffic snakes along La Cienega Boulevard below.

This is the proposed home of Baldwin Hills Park, which could become a 1,200-acre, state-owned sanctuary in one of the most park-poor regions in the nation. During this afternoon visit, Feldman exulted in the landscape as if she were miles from civilization.

“There’s something the human spirit needs in high places,” she said, absorbing the view. “People are really hungry for that literal--and spiritual--breathing room.”

After 16 years in various conservation jobs and causes, Feldman has learned the hard way that breathing space in Southern California doesn’t come cheaply or easily. Now, in another challenge, the 39-year-old nature lover has been hired by the state to transform what is now a mainly industrial landscape into the proposed Baldwin Hills Park.

Last week, she and other park supporters celebrated a victory when state officials announced the $41.1-million acquisition of a significant piece of the future park, a 68-acre parcel originally slated for a hilltop housing development.

“Esther is the fullback of Southern California environmentalism,” said Steve Soboroff, president of the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commission. “Without Esther, there isn’t a Baldwin Hills Park.”

The nonprofit organization, Community Conservancy International, that she founded and heads is supervising the park’s master plan and must create a coherent concept from the conflicting ideas of nearby residents, community leaders, conservationists and elected officials.

She also will work with the landscape architects, biologists and others who are preparing to unveil a preliminary plan next spring.

Perhaps more important than handling such details, Feldman is an influential advocate for the park, many officials say.

The park is envisioned as a 2-square-mile swath of land between Culver City, Inglewood and Los Angeles and would be larger than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. But that could take five to 10 years to complete. Feldman hopes to have a small portion ready within two years.

Hundreds of acres still are occupied by the Stocker Resources Inc. oil company, which estimates that its share of the property is worth about $1 billion. But that number doesn’t faze Feldman.

“Everything has a price on it in the end,” she said. “If we have the funding in place . . . that will make for a very different discussion.”

Though Feldman lives on a Malibu hilltop and loves ocean kayaking and surfing, she’s not one to hug trees or hijack bulldozers.

Her no-nonsense approach to preservation has earned Feldman the support of the region’s most influential lawmakers and environmentalists. They describe her as a pragmatist who plows through bureaucracy with common sense and compromise.

“She’s a tough, smart woman,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “Nobody questions her intellect and commitment. As a result of her attention to detail, she becomes indispensable to the process. She works harder than anybody else will.”

The state already owns the 350-acre Kenneth Hahn Park. But since the 1970s, advocates have wanted a much larger park, stretching south from Ballona Creek to Slauson Avenue in the hills between La Brea Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard. Until recently, funding was stalled.

The effort is still haunted by a simmering turf war between state and local agencies eager to claim ownership. Some Culver City residents worry that the state’s aggressive acquisition in the Baldwin Hills will diminish local control.

Talks are underway to purchase another 141 acres next year, according to officials of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the state agency that is joining with Los Angeles County to create the park.

Meanwhile, about 10,000 private investors in Stocker Resources Inc. own mineral rights to about 900 acres, according to company spokesman Steve Rusch.

The Houston-based firm plans to “aggressively pursue” oil and natural gas in the Baldwin Hills for the next 30 years, Rusch said.

Plans for a park are fine, Rusch said, “as long as it happens after we’re gone.”

Feldman asserts that clever landscaping can mask oil rigs and create a serene environment for a park while allowing some oil production to continue. She cites dozens of oil-rich properties in Los Angeles County, such as the Beverly Center, in which the two coexist.

“This is about changing the perception of what is economically possible,” she said. “It’s a matter of saying how are we going to do that in the Baldwin Hills. Not if.”

Feldman was introduced to the Baldwin Hills five years ago while scouting potential park sites as the director of the local office of the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit conservation group.

“It caught my heart,” she said, gesturing at the industrial landscape. “Can you imagine if you came out here and this was all grasses and birds?”

Later, Feldman founded Community Conservancy International and started researching and marketing the concept for the Baldwin Hills Park.

Around that time, state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) had crafted legislation that directed the state Department of Parks and Recreation to expand Kenneth Hahn Park and secured about $4 million to create a master plan.

Rusty Areias, director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, recalled that Feldman, during their first conversation, sold him on the idea of acquiring the 68 acres that had been intended as the site of Vista Pacifica, a planned tract of 264 hilltop homes near Culver City.

“She said, ‘We got to do this Vista Pacifica and you’ve got to find the money,’ ” Areias said.

Feldman grew up in San Francisco in an activist family. She remembers tagging along with her parents to antiwar marches and civil rights demonstrations. After graduating from UC Davis with a degree in soil and water science, she spent several years tending an organic farm in Northern California.

Her first job was as an environmental lobbyist in Sacramento who helped push state bond measures for parks. In 1988, she moved to Los Angeles to work for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and helped launch its Los Angeles River Greenway program. Its goal was to turn the manufacturing corridor along the riverbank into a public park.

She also helped write two successful Los Angeles County measures, both named Proposition A, that raised a total of $859 million to improve parks and clean up Santa Monica Bay.

“Everything she does is a catalyst,” said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “She creates the spark.”