Council Approves Land Swap Deal to Save Open Space

City leaders have endorsed a land swap deal to let one local developer build apartments across town in exchange for handing over 180 acres of open space.

The deal is part of a complicated transaction that also promises to resolve a multimillion-dollar Borchard Road lawsuit.

City officials and developers suggest the plan will save valuable open space, reduce the overall number of homes planned in the city and provide $500,000 for subsidized housing.

“The stars had all lined up in a unique formation, present nowhere else in the community, that made this whole deal possible,” City Atty. Mark Sellers said Wednesday.

After a five-hour hearing Tuesday night marked by bursts of applause and occasional political barbs, the council voted 4 to 1, with Councilwoman Linda Parks dissenting, to OK the plan in concept and have the staff devise a formal agreement.

“My major concern is not being in the loop when the developers are in the loop,” Parks said at the meeting. Parks’ attempt to delay final approval of the matter until after Nov. 28, when the newly elected council will be seated, failed 4 to 1.

The complex land deal involves three developers and two separate subdivisions--Rancho Conejo in Newbury Park and Dos Vientos in the southwest portion of the city. It resulted from eight months of negotiations with builders and city planners led by Councilman Andy Fox, with the goal of saving 180 acres known as the Western Plateau from bulldozers.

Shapell Industries, which owns the plateau overlooking Hill Canyon and has authorization to build 147 homes on the site, would give the city the land in exchange for the right to build 19 extra houses in its nearby Rancho Conejo development as well as 128 apartments in the Dos Vientos subdivision in Newbury Park.

Dos Vientos’ developers--Miller Bros. Investments and Operating Engineers Trust--would give the city some of their land to make room for the Shapell project in exchange for various concessions.

Operating Engineers wants to build 72 homes where only 12 were planned, and Miller Bros. hopes to construct 171 attached condominiums to be sold at market rates, rather than 225 apartments that were to be rented exclusively to low-income people and senior citizens.

The original Dos Vientos plan approved by the city in the late 1980s included 350 apartments for seniors and low-income families. To help make up for that loss of affordable housing, the two developers have pledged to contribute a total of $500,000 to the city to subsidize housing elsewhere, and Operating Engineers agreed to build up to 50 affordable units on land designated by the city, Sellers said.

The affordable-housing issue has generated the most criticism.

Some Dos Vientos residents say the promise of senior housing is part of what attracted them to buy homes in the neighborhood, and seniors advocates said Thousand Oaks can’t afford to give up any units when there are waiting lists at every existing senior apartment complex.

“It’s upsetting when we hear things like this, because we don’t have too much power to sway anybody--we just have to hope our inputs are heard,” said Fred Severo, a member of the city’s Council on Aging.

Dan Hardy, executive director of Many Mansions, a local nonprofit group dedicated to affordable-housing issues, said that while he thinks the open-space addition and a proposed YMCA site are benefits, he is worried about the loss of so many affordable housing units.

“We certainly hope the city can come up with some appropriate sites [for the 50 units], but they’re difficult to find these days,” he said.

According to the Southern California Assn. of Governments, Thousand Oaks will need more than 800 units to serve very-low-income people--a family of four that makes less than $34,000 a year--to satisfy demand.

Sellers and some council members, however, argue that the deal is actually better in meeting the city’s affordable-housing needs, because the city never required the developer to actually build the 350 units.

“We’re fooling ourselves to think we’d ever see affordable housing out there,” said Sellers, contending that the same people who packed the City Council chambers Tuesday to voice objections would also be there to protest senior housing at Dos Vientos. “Rather than leaving it to the developer and the marketplace, we’ll have greater control to make it happen at the right location.”

And getting all three developers involved in the negotiations created a chance to resolve other issues, such as two lawsuits pending against the city over the extension of Borchard Road and what some consider an inadequate site for a new Newbury Park branch of the YMCA, Sellers said.

Both Operating Engineers and Miller Bros. have agreed to drop their lawsuits--one that seeks $15 million in damages--if the land swap deal goes through. And the YMCA facility, which would include a much-needed public day-care center for the area, was initially planned on property at the end of a residential cul-de-sac that Fox said would have been “a planning nightmare.”

Parks, however, maintains that the city isn’t getting enough out of the deal. She said officials should also push the developers to provide land for a fifth middle school for the Conejo Valley Unified School District. She also opposed giving up any affordable and senior housing without greater assurances that such units would be built elsewhere.

And dozens of Dos Vientos residents packed the council meeting to say there are other consequences to the city’s effort to save the Western Plateau.

Neighbors object to both the 60-home increase on the Operating Engineers’ property and its eliminating the senior-citizen designation on the apartments. They argued that while senior apartments would probably house one to two residents, the proposed new units could potentially bring larger families or groups of college students.

Resident Deborah Bucksbaum said she would closely monitor the environmental review of the proposed housing changes.

“One of the things we’ll be looking for is the developers fulfilling their obligation to provide for a middle school,” she said.

Shapell’s authorization to build housing on the Western Plateau expires in June 2001, which is why Parks said she would rather not strike the deal now. But Sellers said Shapell officials could extend that deadline by filing the right paperwork.

*

Rorie Skei, deputy director for natural resources and planning with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and chairwoman of the Conejo Open Space and Conservation Authority, called the city’s action an “ingenious” way of preserving the Western Plateau. Out of 262 plots targeted for public acquisition, the plateau was ranked 21st.

“Certain landowners are not going to give up entitlements, and Shapell is one of them,” Skei said. “Even if that property was only worth $10 million, it would be beyond the outer limits of what the conservancy could spend in one place.”