Longtime Foes of Ahmanson Project Rejoice

Volunteers, activists and elected officials throughout Southern California rejoiced Tuesday as news spread that the state was on the brink of buying Ahmanson Ranch after a 17-year battle to preserve the rolling hills of heritage oaks, grasslands and rare wildflowers.

None among them was more pleased than Mary Wiesbrock, an Agoura Hills wife, mother and part-time medical technologist who spearheaded the effort to save the ranch from development.

“This is very, very exciting,” said Wiesbrock, who founded the grass-roots organization Save Open Space to fight the project 14 years ago. “The ranch is critical to the integrity of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and saving the Malibu Creek watershed. Right now, I’m watching and waiting and hopefully we’ll have this huge celebration when Ahmanson Ranch becomes parkland.”

The tentative $150-million deal with landowner Washington Mutual will preclude development on one of the largest remaining tracts of privately owned land in the mountains ringing the San Fernando Valley. The 2,800-acre site was slated for a 3,050-home golf course community, but the discovery of a rare frog and flower held up the project. Adding to the anti-development momentum was a $1.5-million campaign led by movie director Rob Reiner.

“I’ve always known we were going to save Ahmanson Ranch from development,” said former Calabasas City Councilwoman Janice Lee. “It has been a monumental effort by literally thousands of people. What strikes me most is ordinary people did something extraordinary. I’m so proud of all the people that tried so hard to save this land.”

On Tuesday, Lee recalled taking a petition with more than 300 names to the Calabasas City Council 12 years ago.

“We took the first petition to save the ranch to the new City Council in 1991,” she said. “The battle began so long ago. We fought many, many battles to win this war.”

Lee became tearful as she talked about what the land meant to her.

“Most people haven’t walked Ahmanson Ranch, but I have over the years,” she said. “The land speaks to me.... It’s as though you are walking where time began. The oak savannas, the incredible beauty of the last native grassland in Southern California, waterfalls, extraordinary vistas, rolling hills. It’s breathtaking.

“You would never expect to find such beauty in the heart of urban Los Angeles. It is our Yosemite. It is as breathtaking in its splendor as Yosemite.”

For years, the acquisition of Ahmanson Ranch in the Simi Hills has been a top priority of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The state agency believed it would complement the adjoining Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area while creating an unbroken chain of parkland at the Los Angeles County-Ventura County border.

Margot Feuer, a volunteer who helped establish the national recreation area, said the addition of Ahmanson Ranch as a wildlife preserve would nearly complete the Santa Monica Mountains parks system.

“It’s quite remarkable and shows how long you have to wait,” the Los Angeles resident said. “We hadn’t thought too much about north of the [Ventura] Freeway until after the idea of the national recreation area was entertained. To have planned it properly, Ahmanson Ranch should have been included. It was part of the Malibu Creek watershed that sustains this ecosystem. To include it was inspired.”

Heal the Bay, an environmental group working to clean up Santa Monica Bay, decided to get involved in a land-use issue for the first time because Ahmanson Ranch is at the headwaters of Malibu Creek, which travels through the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

“Anything that happens at Ahmanson Ranch would affect everything along the way,” said Shelley Luce, a staff scientist for Heal the Bay. “The sources of these things -- bacteria, pathogens, algae -- are houses, roads, sewage systems. If they were built at the headwaters, they would affect all the water going down to the bay. For all of us, this is a huge victory.”

The latest news is “a dream come true,” said Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks, a slow-growth advocate. “It was a lot of hard work, a lot of battles along the way.”

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn, who voted to approve the Ahmanson housing project 11 years ago and endorsed a revised environmental study of the development last year, acknowledged that the political climate had changed.

“It was a heck of a nice project. It really was,” Flynn said. “They spent a lot of time and money on it. We tried our best and it did not work.”