Request to Remove 1 Oak Brings On an Investigation : Topanga Canyon: The county will look into claims that a landowner signed over two adjacent lots to associates to avoid the review process.

A solitary oak tree gave Topanga Canyon environmental activists an opening to bring on a county investigation into construction of three proposed houses along Topanga Skyline Road.

Alan Pacella, who identified himself as a music video producer, had applied for a routine building permit to construct a two-bedroom house. The project required Board of Supervisors approval only because Pacella wanted to remove an oak tree to build his driveway.

But when the seemingly straightforward request came before the board last week, Pacella’s neighbors wove a complicated tale of alleged deception and intrigue.

They said Pacella signed over two adjacent lots to other people last year to avoid the more complicated and lengthy conditional-use permit review required by the county for developers of two or more contiguous lots in hilly areas, such as Topanga Canyon.

As evidence that the three lots actually are owned by the same person, they produced an ad from Thursday’s Topanga Messenger newspaper, offering the three lots “with approved plans” for sale jointly and listing one address, a post office box in Santa Monica. They also showed that the same telephone number was given for all three property owners on the building permit applications for the three sites and on the advertisement.

In an interview after the vote Thursday, Pacella said the other two owners, Gilman Fera and Susan Bastet, are his uncle and sister-in-law, both of whom live with him and share his post office box and telephone. He said all three just want to build their own homes on the lots and move out of the city.

However, Don Barceloux of the Topanga Skyline Homeowners Assn. said Bastet is Pacella’s ex-girlfriend. He called Pacella a small-time developer trying to avoid the additional restrictions on grading, setback from the road and environmental mitigation involved in the conditional-use permit process.

Barceloux, who lives across the street from the three lots, said he believes that Pacella may only want to raise the lots’ resale value by obtaining county approval to build. All of the major Topanga homeowner and environmental groups oppose the project, he said, “because of the importance of the precedent this sets for the thousands of small, undeveloped lots in Topanga.”

According to voter registration records, Pacella and Fera are registered at the same Santa Monica address, but Bastet earlier this year changed her registration from that location to a Los Angeles apartment.

According to a deed on file with the county recorder’s office, the two adjacent lots were purchased in April, 1989, by a company called Minivideo Inc., which Pacella said is a music video company he owned and sold in 1990.

However, the homeowners presented the board with incorporation documents filed with the secretary of state’s office in 1989 describing the company as a real estate development business. They list Pacella as chief executive officer, Bastet as secretary and Fera as chief financial officer.

When confronted with this information, Pacella urged the board not to delve into the past.

“We have to look at the facts as they are today,” he said. “The only ownership I have today is one lot . . . nor do I have a position now with Minivideo. So I believe these facts to be moot.”

Pacella also noted that he had originally applied for a conditional-use permit, but county planners advised him that he needed only a building permit.

John Schwarze, county director of current planning, said after the hearing that Pacella was told a conditional-use permit would not be necessary only after he filed new deeds on the property showing the three different owners.

Over Pacella’s angry objections, Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents Topanga, asked county attorneys and planners to study the lots’ ownership. The oak tree removal application will return to the board in four weeks.

“There are enough questions that I don’t feel comfortable just approving it,” Edelman told Pacella, after asking him to be quiet. “I want to be fair with you, but I want to be fair with the people who have to live with this, too.”