Sale Offer by Builder May Save Wetland

A significant swath of the largest wetlands on the Los Angeles County coast could be preserved under an agreement signed Wednesday by the developers of the giant Playa Vista project and a national conservation group.

By giving the Trust for Public Land an exclusive option to buy 193 acres adjacent to Marina del Rey, the builder signaled its willingness to scale back the the controversial project of homes, offices and commercial buildings once expected to stretch from the San Diego Freeway to the sea.

The agreement puts the conservation group in a position to significantly expand preservation of wildlife habitat and parkland in the historic Ballona Wetlands.

“We are a willing seller,” said Peter Denniston, president of Playa Vista LLC. “We would not be signing an option agreement if we weren’t willing to sell.”

Yet the deal is far from done. The Trust for Public Land, a conservation group that specializes in complex land transactions, has a year to raise the money and to bring together widely differing views as to the value of the land.

A key breakthrough came after nine months of negotiations when Playa Vista agreed to allow an appraiser to set the value of the land--all located west of Lincoln Boulevard, between the Westchester bluffs and Marina del Rey.

Through this process, the trust hopes to narrow the gap between Playa Vista’s optimistic expectations of $200 million or so for the property, and the $25 million that state officials set aside to turn the scrubby brush and wetlands into public parkland.

“We think all of the stars are aligned to make this happen,” said Reed Holderman, executive director of the Trust for Public Land’s California program.

So does Ruth Galanter, a Los Angeles councilwoman who represents the area and nudged the developer and the conservation group into negotiations.

“This is an enormous step forward,” said Galanter, who first ran for office in 1987 to get Playa Vista out of the wetlands. “In the 20 or so years I’ve been dealing with this, nobody believed any of this could be saved from development.”

If the deal goes through, the additional open space would be linked to 340 acres of marsh and coastal scrub lands that the developer has already agreed to restore. That would mean that about half of Playa Vista’s 1,087 acres would be preserved as open space or wildlife habitat.

Opponents of the huge development welcomed news of the potential deal. They speculated that the willingness to give up the coastal parcels signals a wavering in the builder’s commitment to develop the property once owned by Howard Hughes.

“We see this as a good sign,” said Bruce Robertson, director of Ballona Valley Preservation League. “But we also see it as a beginning of the end. They [the developers] are finally beginning to admit they cannot build the massive city they’ve been planning all along.”

If the sale of the 193 acres goes through, the developer would forsake plans to build 4,400 apartments and condominiums and 220,000 square feet of commercial space.

But even with that construction stripped away, Playa Vista remains an enormous development.

The developers have begun construction of 705 apartments at the corner of Lincoln and Jefferson boulevards. Bulldozers have been grading the land and laying sewer lines elsewhere for what would be a total of 8,600 dwellings and 5.2 million square feet of commercial, office and retail space.

A coalition of environmental and neighborhood groups has been doggedly fighting for years to halt construction on the entire 1,087-acre property. The groups cite concerns about everything from extra traffic to loss of habitat for the endangered Belding’s savannah sparrow. Most of the coalition members want all of the land to become a wildlife refuge.

“We want to buy all of the land, take out the buildings and restore the land,” said Sabrina Venskus, director of the Ballona Wetlands Land Trust.

Holderman, an experienced conservation deal maker, considers this a fantasy.

“It’s a nice goal,” he said. “But let’s bring a little reality into the equation. We operate in a real world, with real possibilities.”

Under the terms of their agreement, Holderman and his staff have exactly one year to rustle up the money to buy 54 acres of the parcel called Area B that are slated for a residential neighborhood. The property is an odd-shaped tract bordered by Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards and Ballona Creek.

If that works out, then Holderman has another year to come up with the money to purchase another parcel, the 139-acre Area A, which is west of Lincoln, bordered by Marina del Rey and Ballona Creek.

The first step, Holderman said, is to get a state-approved appraiser to assess the value of both parcels, before the end of the year. Then he will be searching for financial backers, both private foundations and public agencies.

Among those who will be asked to come up with the money, he said, will be the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We don’t want to predetermine who will end up with the property,” Holderman said. “We’ll go where the money is.”

Rusty Areias, state parks director, called the 193 acres “an incredible piece of property” in an urban area woefully short on open space, parkland and wildlife habitat.

“Every time I fly over Los Angeles, I’m reminded of the lack of parks in the area,” he said. A recent national study crowned Los Angeles as the most congested city in America, with a pitifully small number of urban parks.

Areias notes that his boss, Gov. Gray Davis, has made it a priority to buy parkland closer to where people live. The Playa Vista parcels would seem to fit that criterion.

At the same time, the Playa Vista acreage, he said, “has a big number attached to it, probably bigger than we can afford. Everyone is going to have to give a little bit to make the numbers work.”

Marcia Hanscom, executive director of Wetlands Action Network, said that Playa Vista’s traditional opponents will rally behind the public purchase of the land--provided it is for a reasonable price.

“More land in public ownership is great,” she said.

“But Playa Vista’s lobbyists in Sacramento have been throwing around the idea that this will cost $200 million,” Hanscom said. “There will not be opposition unless it is at an exorbitant price that will bail out the developers. We don’t want to set a really bad precedent for the purchase of other wetlands.”

Opponents worry that an infusion of cash from the land sale could in effect help finance the remainder of the project.

Denniston, who will step down as Playa Vista president at the end of the year, said the development company will not jump at any price for the land.

“I have to make sure my owners and investors get fair value for the property,” he said, declining to specify a dollar figure. “Just become we signed an option agreement doesn’t mean it’s going to work.”

During the option period, he said, the company will continue to pursue various permits and environmental studies needed to begin construction on the 193 acres.

Neither Playa Vista nor the Trust for Public Land would release a copy of the option agreement. Both parties said that the appraisal and ongoing negotiations will be conducted in private, until they have a definitive deal.

Touring the property on Wednesday, Holderman stopped to watch half a dozen herons preening in the still of the morning.

“The great things is to have wetlands near where people live,” he said, “so they don’t have to go to a museum to see a great blue heron.”

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Playa Vista Option

The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit conservation group, has an option to buy 193 acres seaward of Lincoln Boulevard--long planned to be part of the Playa Vista residential and commercial development. Deal makers need to raise state and federal money to purchase Area A and the residential part of Area B.

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Sources: Playa Vista, Trust for Public Land

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