Gate Issue Remains Open for Discussion

There was Watergate and “Heaven’s Gate.” In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mountaingate there’s Street Gate.

Residents of the wealthy enclave on a hilltop overlooking Sepulveda Pass are locked in a fight that won’t go away over a plan to build a gate across a public road leading to their homes -- and to popular Santa Monica Mountains parkland.

Reminiscent of the “gate” disputes that caused upheavals in Washington politics and Hollywood filmmaking, this one also has more than its share of political intrigue and aesthetic quarreling.

The Los Angeles City Council agreed April 4 to allow residents to close Canyonback Road and construct a gate across it at its intersection with Mountaingate Drive west of the San Diego Freeway. The 13-0 vote seemingly ended eight years of wrangling.

But opponents of the gate complain that the street closure was prematurely approved by officials who ignored a 4-year-old pledge not to act before making “satisfactory arrangements” that would leave homeowners and hikers alike happy.

Canyonback extends a quarter-mile along a ridge top that separates Mandeville Canyon from Sepulveda Pass. Besides being a residential street, it connects two fire roads that are used as popular hiking and mountain-bike trails.

Hundreds of recreational users pass through the neighborhood each weekend on foot or bicycle. Others park on the street and use the fire roads for access to other mountain trails.

Citing safety concerns, leaders of the Crown Homeowners Assn. who represent 71 Canyonback townhouse owners petitioned in 1995 to close off the street with a guardhouse.

The road-privatization request was stalled when some residents disputed the notion that there was a security problem and complained that the gate would be intrusive. The city’s Planning and Fire departments opposed the closure, as did transportation engineers who noted that the roadway is a scenic secondary highway they said is needed “to provide access and circulation for future development” in the area.

City officials eventually agreed that the public street could be given up if the problems and objections were overcome -- including the thorny issue of outsiders’ access to the hiking and biking trails.

Steps were taken to lower the classification of the street from scenic highway to “local.” The city named the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as the point agency on the issue of hiker and biker access.

Condominium association leaders formed a “gate committee” to negotiate over residents’ concerns about the proposed entryway.

By this March 23 that committee had reached an “agreement in principle” with dissidents that dealt with gate design issues. Plans for a guarded gatehouse were scrapped and a proposal for an electrically controlled, telephone-equipped gate was substituted.

But a notation at the bottom of the agreement conceded that major issues were unresolved. They included outsiders’ access through the gate to hiking trails, parking for outsiders and gate-area residents’ noise concerns.

Nonetheless, on March 26 the City Council’s three-member Public Works Committee decided on a 2-0 vote to forward the Mountaingate gate request to the entire City Council for consideration.

Or did it?

The official city file indicates that of the panel’s members, Councilwoman Jan Perry and Councilman Tom LaBonge voted yes and Councilman Nick Pacheco was absent. But LaBonge does not recall voting.

“I wasn’t there. That meeting wasn’t on my calendar,” he said late last week. Sometimes, he said, committee members are marked present if they check in at the end of the meeting.

Gate opponents complain that the council’s subsequent routine approval came without discussion -- even though key disputes over the gate remained unresolved.

But city officials say an amendment requiring that “satisfactory arrangements” for public access be made between the city, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Mountaingate residents before any gate on the street is closed was added to the motion.

“Right now the revocable permit has been approved.... They can have a gate. But they have to leave it open” until access and parking issues are resolved, said Julie Pietroski, planning deputy to Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents the Mountaingate area.

“Perhaps pedestrian gates can be left open during the day” or “a certain number” of outsiders’ cars can be let through the gate at a time, Pietroski said.

The idea of paying for a gate that anyone can go through, however, is leaving some previous gate supporters cold. And despite the gate committee’s attempt to reach an agreement, some of those living closest to the planned gate remain angry.

Instead of a view of the distant ocean from his front windows that he now enjoys, 18-year resident Howard West said he will gaze upon an unsightly, illuminated iron fence that will zigzag across the street.

Unless special double-paned windows are installed in his house, West worries, he will be barraged with drive-through restaurant-like loudspeaker banter between visitors at the unmanned gate and residents behind it. West said he and others signed the gate agreement after deciding “it was the best deal we could get.”

Richard Zien, who headed the gate committee, said West should not be surprised by the gate proposal. West actually “drew up the concept that the architect went with,” Zien said.

Spencer Emmons, a Los Feliz television stage manager who rides a big-wheeled skateboard called a “mountain board” in the Santa Monica Mountains, said he is disappointed that city officials didn’t notify open-space users in advance so they could testify about the planned closure. He said the Mountaingate area’s “Kenter Coaster” trail is one of the mountains’ most popular because of its challenging riding terrain.

“You have to balance the private need for privacy against the public need for access to the Santa Monica Mountains,” agreed mountain biker Peter Heumann, a Calabasas consumer show producer who belongs to the Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Assn. It is a 16-year-old group active in Los Angeles-area mountain-biking access debates.

Conservancy leaders said they are reluctant to be cast as referees in the gate dispute. But Rorie Skei, chief deputy director of the agency, said she is confident that access to the rugged area that her group calls “the Big Wild” will remain open.

“No one wants their neighborhood overrun, but people in the state have a right to get to open space,” she said.

Mountaingate’s Albert Kallis, president of the Crown Homeowners Assn., said those on his street have a right to peace and quiet as well. There are some who can’t sleep after 6 a.m. on weekends because of noisy trail users, he said.

“We have 15 or 20 cars blocking the driveways on weekends. There are bicyclists who climb our fence and swim in our community pool,” said Kallis.

“We’re trying to provide some security for ourselves and at the same time be open with access,” he said. “We’re trying desperately to be very reasonable.”