Court Rejects Hearing on Las Virgenes Development

The state Supreme Court has put an abrupt end to the hopes of Calabasas residents intent on blocking a $200-million development planned for the largest valley in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Court officials said Friday that justices will not consider homeowner complaints that Los Angeles County officials broke the law three years ago by authorizing the 520-acre development in the Las Virgenes Valley.

The decision will allow the Currey-Riach Co. of Calabasas to immediately begin construction of 1.2 million square feet of industrial and commercial space and of 1,312 apartments and other housing.

The court voted 6 to 1 on Thursday against hearing arguments against the development from the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation. Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso dissented.

The federation is a coalition of 15 homeowner associations from neighborhoods between Woodland Hills and Westlake Village. The group sued to block the project after unsuccessfully opposing it before the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission in the early 1980s.

Appropriateness Challenged

Federation officials contended that the project, which will be the largest development of its type in the western part of the county, is inappropriate for the rural valley, which leads to Malibu Canyon and is known as a gateway to mountain parkland.

Their suit alleged that the county ignored the project’s environmental impact and violated both county and state zoning laws in authorizing construction.

However, the courts sided with the county, which argued that it had acted within the law at every step.

Homeowners took the case to the state’s highest court two months ago after losing decisions in Superior Court and the state Court of Appeal.

The latest denial drew cheers Friday from both the developer and Los Angeles County.

“This is the end of the line for them,” Currey-Riach spokesman Hans Giraud said of the homeowners. “It’s a real blow to the environmentalists, or no-growthers as they should be called.”

County Planning Director Norman Murdoch said the lengthy legal fight validates the county’s policy of “clustering” development on flat areas to protect scenic hillsides. At the Currey-Riach site, about 215 acres of hilly terrain will be preserved.

‘Vote of Confidence’

“This is a clear-cut vote of confidence in the integrity of the county’s planning and environmental process,” Murdoch said. “This is a terribly important decision in preserving rational planning.”

County lawyer Helen Parker said the court decision clears the way for officials to use previously prepared environmental assessments without doing “everything over again from scratch” when considering development requests.

But federation president Dennis Washburn charged Friday that the ruling could open the door to what he described as “short-sighted planning” throughout the state. He said the decision will hit Calabasas especially hard.

“The environmental impact, the traffic problems and the impact that project will have on our education system is so significant,” Washburn said. “We had to do something. We went as far as we could.”

Federation attorney Greg Aftergood said homeowners had expected the justices to hear their appeal. To bolster their case, they had collected friend-of-the-court briefs from two public-interest law groups and the state attorney general’s office, he said.

“We’re very surprised at what has happened. And very disappointed,” he said.