L. A. County Officials Seek Ways to Lessen Project’s Traffic Impact

The haggling is far from over.

Tuesday’s approval of the Ahmanson Ranch project merely shifts the tortuous battle over the mammoth housing and commercial development from the hearing rooms of Ventura County to the streets of Los Angeles County, where its adverse effects will be most sharply felt.

In the next several weeks, officials from Calabasas as well as Los Angeles city and county will determine how disputes over issues such as traffic mitigation will be resolved. Although the project will be built entirely within Ventura County, its only access would be along Los Angeles County roads--dumping more than 37,000 vehicles a day onto Victory Boulevard in West Hills and Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Calabasas.

That gives Los Angeles County officials and residents considerable leverage--power they felt they did not have when the issue was being considered by Ventura County. In order to get the permission it needs to connect with public streets, the Ahmanson Land Co. may have to scale down its project to offset its impact on surrounding communities.

Because the project’s roads will plug into public streets, Los Angeles County officials could be sued if they refuse to grant access to Ahmanson. They do, however, retain considerable discretionary power in granting permits. Conditions of such permits could include erecting gates on any roads to be built, limiting their width or restricting traffic flow with stoplights.

The question is whether officials on the Los Angeles side of the county line will continue to negotiate with Ahmanson for such changes or pursue hardball tactics such as filing a costly, time-consuming lawsuit to overturn Tuesday’s approval by Ventura County supervisors.

“We don’t want to sue them,” Calabasas Mayor Pro Tem Marvin Lopata said. “And they don’t want us suing them.”

Donald Brackenbush, president of the Ahmanson Land Co., said the developers have “had a number of meetings with” officials of Los Angeles County jurisdictions. “We think these problems can be solved and that is our next task,” he said.

For example, Ahmanson executives over the past month have offered to reduce the size of the project’s 400,000-square-foot commercial center and to give more than $7 million to Calabasas for road improvements in that city. They also have said they would erect gates to restrict access to residents and employees of the new mini-city to prevent commuters from using the project’s roads as a shortcut around the sluggish Ventura Freeway.

Those sorts of gestures make Los Angeles city and county officials hopeful that Ahmanson will make comparable concessions to them in order to avoid a costly and time-consuming legal battle, sources said.

“I think they want to be the guys in the white hat, not the black hat,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who has previously vowed to take all measures possible to prevent the project’s traffic from funneling onto Victory Boulevard in her district. “And they can be white-hat folks if they make some substantial changes to their project.”

Picus said she still opposes the project as it stands because it will dump thousands of cars a day onto Victory Boulevard on the ranch’s eastern flank.

“My position has not changed one iota,” Picus said. “This is a residential street and the quality of life for people who live there will be disrupted. I am committed to doing anything in my power not to let that happen.”

Picus said she has contacted Los Angeles city lawyers about the possibility of legal action. A large homeowner group and an environmental organization have also said they might go to court to block the project.

Picus and Calabasas officials agree that gating the project at one end or the other would probably be the most effective way of reducing bypass traffic. Ventura County officials scoffed at the notion of erecting a gate in their jurisdiction.

But both Los Angeles city and county have the ability to block traffic on Thousand Oaks and Victory boulevards, where they have rights of way but no streets presently exist. Picus said Tuesday that she would ask city attorneys to explore the option of putting a gate at the western end of Victory.

Brackenbush said Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents the area affected, was considering allowing gates to be installed on Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Calabasas. Edelman could not be reached for comment Tuesday.