ACTIVIST FILES SUIT TO STOPR CONSTRUCTION WORK AT PARK.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - An activist who opposed the city's plan to give 4.5 acres of Lancaster City Park to Costco for a store has filed a legal challenge seeking to halt construction work in the park.

Robin Collins and her husband, Emmett, are seeking a court order to stop work until an environmental impact report is completed, saying the city and its redevelopment agency failed to comply with state environmental law.

``My whole main purpose is to preserve the beautiful park. It's a beautiful, gorgeous park. To me that's the most pristine end of it,'' Robin Collins said. ``It's a very sad thing to happen. I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't try to at least save the park.''

Collins was the person who discovered the city's plan for the park last summer, after she spotted a line painted across the grass at the park's southern end.

Filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the legal challenge seeks a temporary restraining order to stop the city ``from taking any action to carry out the project pending trial.''

The challenge also wants a court order directing the city to set aside its ``notice of exemption,'' under which the city determined that the decision to approve the developer agreement with Costco was exempt from further environmental study.

The couple also want an order to ``suspend all activity with respect to the project that could result in any change or alteration in the physical environment'' until the city has complied with the California Environmental Quality Act; and to prepare an environmental impact report, court records show.

City Attorney Dave McEwen said the legal challenge was ``without merit'' and filed beyond the statute of limitations.

``On the contrary, we followed (CEQA guidelines) very precisely. The City Council considered a mitigated negative declaration in connection with a conditional use permit for the project last June. Under CEQA you are required to address CEQA issues as early in the process as possible. They did that. Then subsequent decisions were made by the redevelopment agency and the City Council, and further environmental consideration was given at that time,'' McEwen said.

McEwen said the deadline to file a legal challenge was March 15, 30 days after the notice of exemption was filed on Feb. 13. McEwen said the challenge should not have any effect on the work, which is under way, because ``it will be dismissed.''

The couple's attorney, C. Robert Ferguson, said the court filing seeks to invalidate the ``mitigated negative declarations'' - which say that environmental harm will be reduced to a level too insignificant to require an environmental report. City officials, Ferguson said, ``thumbed their nose to environmental procedures that are necessary to approve a project.''

``We are trying to get them to back up and do it right. The aim of the lawsuit is to make them go back and re-evaluate exactly what they are doing,'' Ferguson said.

Ferguson disagreed about the statute of limitations, saying the deadline is May 25, six months after the Nov. 27 approval of the developer agreement. The original petition was filed March 20, followed by an amended version filed on Monday.

Capping two years of controversy, City Council members last November voted to approve giving up a slice of Lancaster City Park to keep Costco and its $470,000 a year in sales tax revenue.

Under an agreement with the city, Costco will get the 4.5 acres at the park's southern edge and a share of future sales tax for about seven years.

Costco wants to build a 148,000-square-foot warehouse store with room for a gasoline station and other features that its 125,000-square-foot Valley Central shopping center store is too small to offer.

City officials said they were convinced Costco would move to Palmdale - where competitor Sam's Club is expected to open a warehouse store at 10th Street West and Avenue O-8 in 2003 - if they didn't find a place to put it in Lancaster.

The city spent more than a year fighting with the 99 Cents Only store chain, trying to acquire land to expand the present Costco store.

In compensation for losing the four-plus acres at City Park, the city is building the 68-acre White Carter Park, named for a Lancaster pioneer, on Sierra Highway near Avenue H.

The 99 Cents Only Store won a court fight with the city when a federal judge declared unconstitutional Lancaster's attempt, since abandoned, to oust the discount store to make room for a Costco expansion.

The city is appealing that decision, but the discount store chain in January filed another federal lawsuit to block the city from turning over the old Costco building to the shopping center owner.

The couple's complaint said Lancaster is a ``desert community'' and ``areas with numerous mature trees and foliage are scarce and are a valued community asset. This action involves the conversion of a unique (to the city of Lancaster) scarce parkland to commercial development.''

The mitigated negative declaration makes ``no provision for the elimination of (the 4.5 acres) of existing parkland or the relocation, preservation, or effective mitigation for the removal of 100-plus mature, fully grown trees,'' the complaint said.

``Respondents unlawfully, wrongfully and intentionnally failed to follow the requirements of CEQA in order to prevent the public from fully evaluating the environmental consequences of destroying respondent city's unique, heavily wooded parkland,'' the complaint said.

The city failed to give the public notice of its intent to approve the mitigated negative declaration for the conditional use permit and failed to make the declaration available to the public for review and comment, the complaint said.

About 30 opponents of the plan attended the June 2001 planning commission meeting at which the permit and the ``mitigated negative declaration'' were approved. Commissioners were given a petition bearing the signatures of more than 500 people opposed to cutting into the park.

The complaint also claimed that the use of the 4.5 acres of the city park for commercial development violates the city's general plan.

The complaint said that ``fair argument exists that the project may have significant environmental effects'' on recreation, biological resources, air quality, noise, transportation and circulation, aesthetics, and land use.