244-Acre Development Dies; Park Born

A 10-year fight to stop the development of 572 luxury homes on 244 acres of land deep in the Verdugo Mountains has ended, and the land will become a public park.

At a ceremony near an area that would have been destroyed to make way for the development, opponents on Saturday celebrated the preservation of the land after the developer sold the parcel to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the city of Glendale for $25 million.

The land was christened the Verdugo Mountains Open Space Preserve.

“It was absolutely exhilarating, quite literally, one of the proudest moments of my life, to be there,” said Marc Stirdivant, president of VOICE, or Volunteers Organized in Conserving the Environment.

“It represented tens of thousands of hours put in by the people of the community,” Stirdivant said Monday.

The proposed development, known as Oakmont V, was the source of heated debate between a coalition of community and environmental groups that wanted to preserve the open space and the developer, Gregg’s Artistic Homes in Glendale, which wanted to build secluded luxury homes.

The land, in northern Glendale, is home to about 2,300 trees of various species, as well as natural springs and streams. It is also populated by deer, bobcats, rabbits, coyotes and other wildlife.

“They wanted to basically grade it over with 5.5-million cubic yards of dirt,” said Stirdivant.

After 10 years, several lawsuits and intense community opposition, the developer agreed to the sale as part of a settlement of a lawsuit against the city of Glendale.

Gregg had sued after a unanimous City Council vote prevented the company from building on the land.

The purchase was made with funds from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the city of Glendale and the state of California, approved by Gov. Gray Davis through his Urban Parks Initiative, after years of lobbying by opponents of the development.

Development foes said there are plans to create environmentally sensitive hiking trails and roads and to build picnic tables and restrooms.

“I think it’s a shame that 500 families won’t have nice new homes to live in,” said developer Lee Gregg, vice president of the company.

“I would have liked to have built the homes. The homes would have been good for Glendale and good for the 500 families who would have lived in them.”

Gus Gomez, a Glendale city councilman, took a different view.

“It’s ours,” he said. “That’s the feeling out in the community. It’s ours.”