Family Finally Beats City Hall and Can Build

The city has finally settled its long-standing legal dispute with developer Nedjatollah Cohan by granting him what he had fought for all along: the right to build houses and a strip mall on his Newbury Park property.

But that is not all the Cohan family will receive after an 18-year battle with local government that pitted the right to develop their property against the overwhelming opposition of surrounding homeowners.

The settlement, announced Tuesday evening after more than a year of mediation, also requires Thousand Oaks to pay the Cohan family $140,000 in cash, up to $70,000 for engineering costs, an additional $90,000 in credit toward planning fees and several acres of city-owned open space to build the family a hilltop estate in Newbury Park.

Most important, perhaps, it states that the two developers of nearby Dos Vientos Ranch will have to shoulder part of the costs for a multimillion-dollar regional flood-control project that will primarily be built on the Cohans’ 47-acre property.

“For us, this has nothing to do with money anymore,” said Albert Cohen, who handled the brunt of the negotiations for the family. “This was emotional. My father bought this land. He did everything right to develop it, but he was denied. Finally, we have won.”

After a stinging 1994 state court ruling that chastised the City Council for violating the Cohans’ constitutional rights and submitting to “the roar of the crowd” in denying their project in 1992, city leaders decided they had better settle with the family.

Thousand Oaks tried last year to overturn the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruling, but was unable to do so. As expected, the Cohans then filed a lawsuit seeking past damages, and city officials became extremely concerned that they would have to pay the Cohans millions of dollars for stalling their project.

“I don’t think it can be understated here that the city was under the gun,” Mayor Andy Fox said. “The city did potentially save millions.”

Albert Cohen, who changed his last name several years ago, said he and his attorneys were confident that if they had continued to press their suit, they would have won millions from Thousand Oaks. But the family, which had already been driven to bankruptcy once because of the dispute, simply could not afford to do that, he said.

“I’ll be very frank: We did not have the financial wherewithal to hold out another five years,” Cohen said. “My family already went bankrupt once. We were not going to risk that again.”

Nedjatollah Cohan, who collapsed and wept after the City Council rejected his project four years ago, said he was happy to see that the strange saga over development of his property had finally come to an end. He expressed concern, however, that this may not be the final legal scuffle.

He noted that although Dos Vientos developers Raznick & Sons and Courtly Homes have agreed to help the Cohans pay for the flood-control project, the precise amounts each party will contribute have yet to be determined. Thousand Oaks and Ventura County will also pay a portion of the flood-control costs.

“I don’t believe personally that we are at the end of this problem,” Cohan said, “because the matter of flood control is still unresolved.”

An Iranian immigrant, the 67-year-old Cohan spent his $2-million life savings in 1977 to buy 85 acres at the southwest corner of Reino Road and Kimber Drive. He later sold half the land to another developer.

Two years later, he began planning to build a shopping center and about 140 homes on the land. But then he learned that two of the area’s major flood-control channels--the south branch of the Arroyo Conejo and Conejo Mountain Creek--ran through his property. That is where Cohan’s problems began.

The county had been eyeing the land for years as the best site for a giant flood-control basin to prevent homes downstream from washing away in the rare event of a flash flood. County officials notified Cohan that to develop the site, he would need to make $4 million in improvements to his land.

Moreover, the Cohans learned, a portion of the property had been declared a wetland, presenting yet another hurdle to development.

After a four-year fight with county officials, Cohan went bankrupt.

He eventually resolved his conflict with the county, agreeing to build a flood-control basin underground. But then Cohan came up against a new foe: the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission. In 1989, he offered to cut in half the amount of property he would devote to commercial development. And in 1992, after twice rejecting his project, the Planning Commission finally granted approval.

But the City Council chose to appeal the ruling to itself, and at a tense meeting packed with more than 200 protesters, council members rejected the project on a 4-1 vote.

Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who voted against the Cohan project, believes there was nothing illegal about the vote when considered purely as a land-use decision. The problem, she said, was that the council should not have appealed the project to itself.

“It saddens me, because we could have had only residential development out there,” Zeanah said. “People do not want a strip mall there, they have made that clear.”

Whatever the case, a 117,000-square-foot shopping center will soon be built on the Cohans’ property. So will up to 105 detached single-family homes and as many as 65 apartment units.

In what city officials are calling a boost for the environment, the flood-control basin will be natural and above-ground. It will separate the homes from the shopping area and will artificially expand the wetlands to a total of as much as 20 acres.

City Manager Grant Brimhall said the Cohans’ project, while only slightly scaled down, should fit in much better with the rest of Newbury Park.

“It took a long time, but the environmental issues were addressed in a far superior manner,” he said. “It’s a heck of a lot better.”