Article taken from the Santa Barbara News Press 
Published with permission

Visits to three national parks show
possibilities for area's future

By MELINDA BURNS 
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER

3/17/03

It survives, in large measure, because 25 years ago Congress drew a boundary around 150,000 acres of land stretching from Point Mugu to the Santa Monica Pier and called it the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

All of the city of Malibu and parts of Los Angeles, Calabasas, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village lie within the park boundaries, along with scattered semi-rural communities and celebrity mansions. But away from the sprawl, bobcats and golden eagles can find a refuge in a patchwork of federal, state and private parklands -- 72,000 acres that are off-limits to development.

It is a precarious balance. As any hiker knows, the serene chaparral setting of these steep mountainsides, disturbed only by the trill of a wren-tit, can quickly give way to views of hilltop mansions on the next ridgeline over, with SUVs glinting in the driveways.

"Saving anything here is a miracle," said Dave Brown of Calabasas, a Sierra Club member who led a congressional committee on a tour of the mountains in 1977. "The population pressure that is building up in Los Angeles is horrendous. It squeezes out to wherever it can go and breaks into the Santa Monica Mountains.

"We're starved for money; and time is against us. If you want to preserve something, you've got to buy it. If you don't, sooner or later, somebody's going to build a house and mess it up."

The recreation area gets 33 million visitors a year, mostly at beaches from Santa Monica to Point Mugu. On weekends, Mulholland Highway, a scenic two-lane road through the heart of the park, is filled with Sunday drivers out for a spin, heading for a favorite beach or just taking in the oak woodlands, winding creek and sculpted sandstone rocks.

Hollywood's old Paramount Ranch, which is still used for the filming of westerns under Park Service ownership, gets crowded during annual banjo and pumpkin festivals, but otherwise it's pretty quiet, the locals say.

"People want to get away from urban life," said Colleen Holmes, a resident of Cornell, a historic community of about 500 people next to the ranch. "They need a place to feel at peace, and nature is the best place to get that. It brings you back to that primitive state of mind where you hear the hawks screeching and see the coyote straying along the trail."

Under legislation introduced this year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, the Park Service and U.S. Forest Service will explore doubling the size of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area to include the "Rim of the Valley Corridor" -- the mountains above the San Fernando, La Crescenta, Santa Clarita, Simi and Conejo valleys.

So far, the public has spent nearly $700 million saving land in the Santa Monica Mountains, counting four major state parks that were purchased in the late 1960s and '70s. In many cases here, developers sold or donated a chunk of their land to a land trust and then built a few homes on the rest.

Half of the national recreation area is in private hands, and at least a quarter of it will remain so. About 33,000 acres are targeted for future purchase by the National Park Service and state Parks Department, assuming the more than 700 owners are willing. But with land selling for an average $6,300 per acre, it could take more than 10 years and $200 million to run through the "wish list."

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a nonprofit group, spends $20 million yearly buying land, mostly with money from state park bonds. At most, Congress gives the Park Service $2 million per year for land in the Santa Monica Mountains, down from an annual $15 million in the late 1970s.

The shortage of funding puts landowners in a double bind, says Tryon Sisson, a property owner with hundreds of acres near Malibu. On one hand, he said, it is getting more difficult to build in the mountains, especially next to public land. On the other hand, the Park Service is short of funds to buy out willing owners.

Since 1978, park records show, Mr. Sisson has sold the Park Service 172 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains for $6.7 million, or nearly $40,000 per acre. But he gripes that he can no longer bulldoze roads on his land. If he does, the Park Service won't buy it.

"If you're a property owner, the Park Service is a horrible neighbor," Mr. Sisson said. "You can't say, 'Hey, Joe, will you kick in a couple of hundred dollars and we'll clean the road up.' The Park Service is letting the road go back to nature."

Since 1978, Mr. Sisson said, he has been trying to sell the Park Service one of the last remaining pieces of private land in Zuma Canyon.

"The Park Service wants my property, but they don't have the money," Mr. Sisson said. "They have purchased every property around me, and it's just me sitting there."

Mr. Sisson said he is opposed to any new national parks -- including one now under study for the Gaviota coast -- until all the willing sellers in the Santa Monica Mountains can be bought out.

"Don't get me wrong," he said. "I'm not complaining about the way I've been treated. My complaint is, Congress creates parks and then doesn't fund them. Why would they create a new park when they don't have the money to pay for the one they created 25 years ago?"

"BOMB CRATERS"

Development in the Santa Monica Mountains has slowed since the 1980s and early 1990s, when, under a growth-minded county Board of Supervisors, 2,200 homes were approved for construction. Today, Los Angeles County issues about 30 permits for mountain homes per year. There are no proposals under review for housing tracts.

"The development climate in the Santa Monica Mountains is low-intensity, and we do not foresee that changing anytime soon," said Gina Natoli, a senior county planner.

Increasingly, the focus of preservationists has shifted to the mansion compounds -- complete with tennis courts, horse corrals, guest houses and swimming pools -- that dot the ridgelines and canyons of the national recreation area.

Because the brush must be cleared 200 feet around the homes to ward off fires, these properties, seen from the air, resemble bomb craters, said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

"We have found it difficult to deal with the exceptionally wealthy individual who wants to put their brilliant white house on top of a knoll with a 360-degree view and their own vineyard," he said. "The message is, unless you own it, the private sector will find a way of making money off that land."

In the end, preservationists say, only public ownership can save land for future generations.

"A lot of times, people are reluctant to have parks purchased because it is going to change the land," Mr. Brown, the Sierra Club spokesman, said. "The land's going to be changed anyway. If it stays in private hands, it's eventually going to be developed. The only way to arrest that process is to bring in some kind of protective ownership."

Meanwhile, vacant land that 20 years ago typically sold for no more than $4,000 per acre in the Santa Monica Mountains is now selling for up to $40,000 per acre.

Owners tired of waiting for the Park Service or the conservancy to buy their properties are opting to sell instead to land moguls such as Brian Sweeney, who now owns 2,200 acres in the mountains. According to his consultant Robert Berry, Mr. Sweeney hires engineers, architects and geologists, applies to the county for homes on single-family lots; and prints up color brochures for prospective buyers. Mr. Berry sends the brochures to the Park Service.

"I say, 'Here's what he's proposed for this property: Now are you interested in the acquisition?" Mr. Berry said. "If your property is not under threat of development, they let you sit there."

Land with development permits commands much higher prices, too.

"Landowners have been grossly overpaid for 'goat country,'Ê" Mr. Brown said. "We've got some really rugged areas without water or sewers; and it is being bought at extreme prices. Only slowly are we developing a land ethic in Southern California. Most people look at land as a source of cash."

UNWILLING SELLERS

For 50 years, preservationists have sought to create a public trail through the Santa Monica Mountains, and now the Park Service is closing in on the dream. The 62-mile-long "Backbone Trail" runs up and down along ridges and through creeks and valleys from Point Mugu to Will Rogers State Park off Sunset Boulevard -- minus a few miles where several owners are reluctant to sell their land.

"We've given them fair-market value appraisals," said Melanie Beck, a Park Service planner. "They're just not motivated. They think it's worth more."

The Park Service has never condemned land in the Santa Monica Mountains to force a property owner to sell. In the early 1980s, having exhausted other options, including a land trade, the agency considered forcing a landowner on Zuma Ridge to sell his lot; but the owner had connections in Congress. He eventually built his home on the ridgeline.

"It's very low key, but you still see it," Ms. Beck said. "It's a human civilization presence in what otherwise would be an unrestricted open space."

The park's fears of a precedent-setting event never materialized. Most of the other landowners in the area willingly sold their land to the Park Service and accepted the price they were offered.

Ultimately, the public winds up subsidizing homeowners who build in wild places. Park Service records show that since 1992, the federal government has paid out $78 million in disaster relief as a result of fire and flood damage to homes in the Santa Monica Mountains, mainly in Malibu, Topanga, Calabasas and Agoura.

That money, from the viewpoint of some preservationists, could have been better spent saving land, even if the occasional condemnation was necessary.

"The Santa Monica Mountains are extremely prone to Santa Ana brush fires," Mr. Brown said. "The good land's been built on. What's going to be built on now are the bad lands.

"You hear people say, 'A man's got a right to build a home. It's liberty, it's freedom.' But it isn't. It's subsidized, and we're paying for it. We've got to confront this someday, or we're going to eat up too much of our money, rushing in and rescuing homes."

EDITOR'S NOTE

At the request of Congress, the Gaviota coast from Coal Oil Point to Point Sal is under study for potential inclusion in the national park system. The National Park Service will release a draft of the study in mid-April for public review. To find out what happens to private land and how tourism affects nearby communities, the News-Press recently visited three national parks on the West Coast. Today, we look at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the world's largest urban park.