Ahmanson Debate Draws a Big Crowd

Taking its show on the road to the heart of secession country, the Los Angeles City Council met Wednesday in a Canoga Park theater to debate one of the hot-button issues in the San Fernando Valley: Ahmanson Ranch.

The council was weighing its response to Ventura County’s latest environmental analysis of Ahmanson Ranch, a 2,800-acre suburb planned for the hills north of Calabasas.

An overflow crowd packed the Madrid Theatre and spilled onto the sidewalk during debate. For opponents, the report’s lack of current statistics on traffic was the key. For supporters, the need for housing was paramount.

In a rare appearance before the City Council that he sat on for nearly 20 years, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky urged the panel to demand a new traffic study for the project, even if it means going to court.

“If you went to a doctor complaining of a pain in your chest today, and you handed him a chest X-ray from 1992,” Yaroslavsky said, “and he looked at the X-ray and looked at your chest and said, ‘You’re fine,’ you’d have a cause of action against that doctor.”

But Steve Weston, an attorney for developer Washington Mutual, countered that the project had been thoroughly studied and the traffic studies approved by transportation experts.

“The traffic studies reasonably forecast and properly mitigate traffic impacts,” Weston said.

Several business leaders also spoke in favor of Ahmanson Ranch, calling it an essential housing component.

Skip Cooper, president of the Black Business Assn., said the project was “an important step toward addressing a housing shortage that is affecting all our communities.”

Critics were equally outspoken.

Linda Parks, a Thousand Oaks council member who was recently elected to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, urged the public to pressure Washington Mutual to sell the land.