Show Will Go On, Ahmanson Backers Say

Despite a new celebrity campaign against the project, Ventura County officials said Thursday the Ahmanson Ranch development will move forward as scheduled without a new environmental impact report.

Actor Martin Sheen and producer-director Rob Reiner appeared at a bank branch of developer Washington Mutual a day earlier to protest the 3,050-home project planned in the Simi Hills near the Los Angeles County line.

“I really feel bad for those celebrities,” Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “They’re being taken in and given a bunch of baloney from people who are telling them lies about this project. I think they’re going to end up with egg on their faces.”

County leaders, who continue to support the project, have already ordered a supplemental environmental report, expected to be released next month. The report will examine planned changes to the development since the discovery of the San Fernando Valley spineflower and California red-legged frog in the area, as well as transportation and air and water quality issues.

Argument Centers On Environmental Review

In addition to environmental groups, Los Angeles County supervisors have opposed the Ahmanson project for years because, they have said, it would dramatically increase traffic in the San Fernando Valley, while Ventura County reaps all of the financial benefits.

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn, who voted for the project nine years ago, said he admires Sheen and Reiner as actors and activists, but that he isn’t swayed by their campaign.

“Movie stars shouldn’t have anything to do with whether we do a new environmental impact report or not,” he said. “They’re involved in the political system and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can’t make one set of constituents more important than another set.”

Dennis Hawkins, a Ventura County planner involved in the Ahmanson review, said there is no reason to scrap the project’s 1992 comprehensive environmental review. Based on the factors that planners have reviewed, he said, a supplemental report should be sufficient. If significant new issues are uncovered, further study could be undertaken, he added.

Reiner, also a well-known children’s health activist, will be co-chairman of a new “high-profile” coalition called Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch. “We are here to stop Washington Mutual from destroying the environment,” he said during a Wednesday news conference.

Calling Washington Mutual a “bad neighbor,” he urged Ventura County leaders to order a new environmental study to replace the existing one. The project has since been slowed by the discovery of the rare plant and amphibian and lawsuits from determined environmentalists, politicians and neighbors who say the project amounts to sprawl.

Washington Mutual, for its part, has also drawn something of a luminary into its camp. The company hired former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt last spring to champion the development.

Project opponents from Heal the Bay and other environmental groups ratcheted up the public relations battle this week with the star-studded news conference.

‘West Wing’ Star Closes Account in Protest

Joining Reiner and Sheen was another Hollywood power broker and longtime Ahmanson foe, Chris Albrecht, HBO’s president of original programming.

“We are convinced that the full truth has never been disclosed,” said Albrecht, adding the region’s population has swelled since the 1992 environmental report was written. “Just drive through Malibu Canyon. In 1992, you could barely see a house. Now you can barely see the canyon.”

Reiner and Albrecht co-chair the new group. Sheen, star of the hit NBC series “The West Wing,” was billed as a former Washington Mutual customer who yanked his account to protest the development.