‘Upzoning’ Blamed for Price of Land : Santa Monica Mountains: Critics say county decisions have inflated the costs of scenic tracts, hindering efforts to buy parcels for public use.

Los Angeles County officials are undermining efforts to complete the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area by relaxing zoning controls on mountain lands and, in effect, inflating the cost of scenic tracts the government wants to buy, according to key congressmen and advocates for the national park.

At issue are decisions by Los Angeles County supervisors to “upzone” mountain lands to allow for more intensive development than land-use plans provide. Critics say upzoning has inflamed an already superheated market for mountain land and encouraged owners to demand more than the appraised value of their property.

One such decision, for example, gave the owners of a piece of property the right to build 47 additional houses on land coveted for parklands, boosting the property’s value by at least $5 million.

The result of such decisions, they say, is that lands needed for the park are made unaffordable and are lost to development, with luxury houses for the rich being built where nature preserves should be.

California lawmakers and environmentalists, who plead each year for federal appropriations to expand the recreation area, said upzoning has become a sore point with key members of Congress, causing them to question how much support the park has from local officials.

Supervisors and their aides said they support the Santa Monica Mountains park but that they must also protect owners’ rights to a fair return for their land.

“We are living in a free country,” said Supervisor Deane Dana, whose district includes the part of the recreation area along the Malibu coast. “We have no authority to freeze land values forever.”

But the upzoning decisions are troubling to a wide range of officials concerned about the park.

“There is a perception among Members of Congress, who are in key positions to determine funding for parks, that Los Angeles County does not actively support setting aside open spaces for public use in the Santa Monicas,” Sen. Pete Wilson (R-California) said in a letter to the supervisors more than a year ago.

One such member is Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee’s interior subcommittee, which budgets money for park acquisition.

Upzoning is “driving up the cost of acquisition,” Regula said. “If the county would like to have a national park . . . they’ve got to cooperate a little bit.”

Rep. Chester Atkins (D-Mass.), also on the panel, said members are concerned “that we’re getting maximum value for our money--that we’re not in a situation where things are happening with zoning . . . which are artificially inflating the value of the land and increasing the burden on the taxpayer.”

The situation has infuriated Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), sponsor of the legislation that created the national recreation area in 1978.

“I cannot understand why, when there’s such strong regional support for the national park, and when the need for more public open space in . . . the Los Angeles area is so obvious to everyone else, that the Board of Supervisors repeatedly makes decisions that allow the destruction of what little open space is left,” Beilenson said in a recent interview.

“I think people would be enraged if they understood that this same supervisor that they cast their vote for . . . is also someone who’s making it virtually impossible for the public to acquire parkland at a reasonable price, in order that some already wealthy developer can make additional millions building enormously high-priced houses, available only to millionaires, in areas where we shouldn’t be building houses at all,” Beilenson said.

But supervisors and their aides said that such attacks are unfair and that they are on record as supporting the park. And although some beneficiaries of upzoning have been campaign contributors, they said their decisions had nothing to do with rewarding supporters.

“The property owners do have rights,” Dana said. “I would imagine we would be open for lawsuits if we restricted people’s rights.”

Dave Vannatta, planning deputy for Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district includes the oak-robed hills and valleys of Agoura within the recreation area, said, “Mike is in support of the creation of the park.”

“What is the county to do?” Vannatta asked. “Is the county to unreasonably withhold development?”

Extending over 155,000 acres from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is actually a mosaic of private lands and public preserves, owned by local, state and federal parks agencies.

The National Park Service eventually is to own 37,910 acres in the area, but due to budget constraints it has acquired only 16,450 acres during the past 10 years.

Moreover, purchases to date have cost the federal government $118 million--or three-fourths of the ceiling of $155 million in the legislation that created the recreation area. Congress eventually must raise the limit if acquisition is to continue.

The controversy involves approvals of more intensive development than provided in the Malibu-Santa Monica Mountains Area Plan, adopted in 1981 as part of the county General Plan, and in the land-use element of the Malibu local coastal program.

The plans control the number of homes or other developments that may be put on tracts of land. However, the limits can be relaxed for specific parcels, in response to requests from developers who present data to show that their proposals will not overburden roads, sewer systems and schools.

Those requests, which are routine in all parts of the county, are, when granted for land in the Santa Monica Mountains, harmful to efforts to acquire parkland, congressmen and park advocates say.

Critics stressed that they are not advocating “downzoning” of mountain tracts and that they merely want to hold the line at current building entitlements.

They say upzoning complicates the daunting task of creating a national park at a time of tight federal budgets, and in a place where land prices already are among the nation’s highest.

Because of upzoning, they said, acquisition funds don’t buy much and developers reject lucrative offers, based on current appraisals, because they expect the land to become more valuable if they seek easy-to-get upzoning. As a rule, parks agencies can only buy land at appraised values.

Some conservationists see upzoning as a kind of “inverse condemnation,” which causes blight and crowding to intrude on adjacent public preserves, thus denying taxpaying visitors full use and enjoyment of what their tax dollars have bought.

But the main effect is to inflate land prices. And critics say it is being felt not only by the Park Service but also by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency that is a key player in development of the park.

“It used to be that the limiting factor was that we didn’t have any money,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director. “Now the limiting factor . . . is the absence of willing sellers--and we’re not talking about willing sellers at less than market value.”

Landowners are so confident they can get upzoning that they, in effect, “laugh at” conservancy appraisals, Edmiston said. “There is such a history of upzoning,” he said “that one would be a fool from just a pure business standpoint” not to assume he can get approval for more development from the county.

But Vannatta, Antonovich’s planning aide, said critics have exaggerated the amount of upzoning that has actually taken place. He said an analysis by county planners showed that since 1981, only about 450 more homes have been approved in the mountains within Antonovich’s district than envisioned by the area plan.

Supervisors have done “a pretty credible job of sticking to” the plan, Vannatta said.

David Brown, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force and vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, questioned Vannatta’s estimate, saying his own analysis shows about 1,000 more units have been approved than provided in the area plan.

Edmiston contended that the actual number doesn’t matter as much as the effect of upzoning on developers’ expectations.

Notwithstanding the complaints of Beilenson and others, the supervisors are on record in support of the Santa Monicas park. In May, 1988, they passed a resolution asking Congress for generous appropriations so scenic tracts would not “be lost to development.”

A few months later, they were reminded of this stand as they considered a controversial request to upzone the former Renaissance Pleasure Faire site in Agoura for a luxury home development, known as Paramount Ranch.

The National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy had long coveted the 320-acre site as an addition to the national recreation area. With that in mind, park supporters urged supervisors to approve no more than 103 homes--the maximum number for which the tract was zoned, which would keep the property more affordable for park acquisition.

Beilenson and Wilson, among others, warned the supervisors that they would be sending the wrong message to Congress if they upzoned the property while the government was seeking to buy it.

But in March, 1989, the supervisors approved development of 150 homes by a 3-1 vote, with only Supervisor Ed Edelman voting no.

The decision increased the value of the land by millions of dollars. The National Park Service and conservancy had pooled their funds and were prepared to pay $14 million--the amount they anticipated the land would be worth if a tract of 103 homes were approved. With approval of 150 homes, the appraised value of the land rose to $19 million, although the developers also rejected an offer for that amount.

Brian Heller, a principal in the project, had said the development would be uneconomical if he were allowed to build only 103 homes. The supervisors said they also were persuaded by the developers that the 103-unit limit was wrong in the first place because it had assumed steeper slopes than were actually on the property.

Several individuals and firms involved in the project were longtime supporters of the supervisors, and particularly of Antonovich, the area’s representative. From 1985-89, they contributed $36,995 to the supervisors--of which $29,495, or more than three-fourths, went to Antonovich.

The $36,995 included $20,600 from the Engineering Technology, Inc. of Sherman Oaks, consultants who represented the developers before the Board of Supervisors. An additional $15,395 came from Art Whizin, Heller Construction and Raiten Development, all principals in the project.

Vannatta said these contributions had “zippo influence” on Antonovich. He pointed out that before the case reached the supervisors, the Regional Planning Commission had decided to let the developers build 159 houses. The supervisors actually reduced that to 150 at Antonovich’s insistence, Vannatta said.

In another recent case, the supervisors in December approved a development in Corral Canyon in Malibu that was to include a golf course, country club and housing development. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy had tried to buy the land for about $8 million, but the developers, Sun Pacific Properties, spurned the offer as ridiculously low.

The decision by the supervisors brought a firestorm of criticism, with opponents saying the scenic canyon, with its year-round stream, should not be merely a playground for the rich.

And three lawsuits were filed in an attempt to void the decision, because it allowed massive grading of streamside habitat area designated for special protection in the Malibu coastal plan.

The decision was rendered moot last week, when the owner of the land, entertainer Bob Hope, suddenly scrapped plans for the golf course and country club and agreed to donate 200 acres, including the habitat area, to the Santa Monicas park.

Had the deal with Hope not been struck, however, a controversial land-use decision would have benefited political contributors.

According to campaign records, individuals and firms involved in the Sun Pacific project contributed $40,845 to the supervisors over five years--more than three-fourths of that to Dana and Antonovich. About half the money was contributed in 1989, when the project was approved.

In March, 1989, alone, Dana received 22 separate contributions totaling $9,900 from those associated with the development.

He got $500 each from Sidney McClue, A. Bruce Robbs and C.B. Robbs, and $1,000 from A. Bruce Robbs, Jr.--officials with Sun Pacific. He also got $500 from the project’s environmental consultants, Planning Consultants Research; $1,000 from the project architects, Corbin, Yamafuji, & Partners; $1,000 from project engineers, Psomas and Associates; and $1,000 from the geotechnical engineers, Schaefer Dixon Associates. Six of these contributions came on the same day, March 20.

Then on March 22, Dana received 14 separate contributions of $100 to $1,000 apiece from attorneys with Latham & Watkins, a big law firm that works for Sun Pacific and many other developers.

Dana said the contributions played no role in the decision.

He called the golf course an “excellent use of the land.” In an interview before the announcement of the gift from Hope, Dana described the project as “very beautiful” and “ecologically sound.”

Another battle arose over the Currey-Riach project, which involves 1,000 condominiums and a commercial complex on land bought by developers from Bob Hope.

Two hundred eighteen acres of the site near Malibu Creek State Park were to be deeded to a parks agency to be preserved as open space under an approval granted by the Regional Planning Commission several years ago.

But the Currey-Riach developers appealed to the Board of Supervisors and persuaded it to let the 218 acres remain as privately owned open space. At a hearing in 1983, Antonovich, who represents the area, stunned environmentalists with his defense of that decision. He said he was concerned that a parks agency might sell rather than preserve the land.

Then, last August, the developers told the county that they wanted to adjust their building plans in a way that would encroach on the open space. The supervisors went along, but told the developers they did not want the amount of open space significantly reduced.

Environmentalists once again pleaded to have the open space given to the conservancy or the National Park Service. The supervisors once again refused, with Antonovich warning that the open space was not secure if in the hands of public parks agencies.

From 1985-89, Currey-Riach Co., its officials and affiliated firms donated $45,805 to campaigns of the supervisors, according to a review of campaign reports. More than half that amount--$24,305--went to Antonovich. Dana got $11,000 and Pete Schabarum $9,500.

Vannatta, the Antonovich aide, said the contributions weren’t a factor in the Currey-Riach case. Open space will not be lost, he said. It was just that the developer “was particularly unwilling to turn it over” to the public.

To the north of Currey-Riach, the Park Service in 1985 paid $8 million to acquire lower Cheeseboro Canyon in Agoura, whose lovely hills and oak savannas have become a favorite of hikers, equestrians and bird-watchers.

But it turned out that Los Angeles County had an easement across the land, which would allow it to bulldoze an extension of Thousand Oaks Boulevard through the heart of the canyon. Conservationists and parks officials since have asked the county to abandon the easement, but to no avail.

Vannatta explained: “We have not said for sure that we are going to stick with that alignment” for the road. But “our public works department feels that it is clearly the best route for a new highway.”