CALABASAS CONDOS KEY TO CITY RACES.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

CALABASAS -- At the gateway to Calabasas, artists once set up roadside easels to paint sheep grazing along the hills.

Then the city allowed 48 condos to obscure the pastoral scene.

"Now it's these crowded town homes right smack in the front yard of the sheepherder's hut," said Nancy Goldsen, 55, of Calabasas. "Couldn't we do a better job of safeguarding the gateway to our community?"

The condos along Las Virgenes Road have become central in a bitter fight for two City Council seats to be decided by voters Tuesday.

At issue, say two political challengers, is the loss of open space and the future of the San Fernando Valley's newest city.

But the two incumbents counter that they've helped make Calabasas one of the nation's "greenest" municipalities.

In a city famous for its bans on smoking, Styrofoam cups and light-pollution, each candidate has flashed their environmental "green" card credentials.

"I call it green against phony green," said challenger Dale Reicheneder, 41, a homeowners association attorney and national trail-running champion. "What I'd like to see is unwanted development (to) stop."

Symbolic of the debate are 48 detached condos on Las Virgenes Road built by Shea Homes and known as the Colony at Calabasas.

Mayor Dennis Washburn, 64, a founder of this southwest Valley city of 23,000, said the development was entitled before Calabasas became a city in 1991.

The four-term mayor, now up for re-election, said he helped steer what would have been a 200,000-square-foot shopping center into 48 homes abutted on three sides by open space.

"To the charge that this is a pro-development council, tell that to the folks at Washington Mutual, which had to sell us Ahmanson Ranch, or to the folks at Soka (University), which sold the people of California their land," Washburn said. "Tell that to the Micor Co., which sold us the land for the Las Virgenes Trail, instead of (building) homes."

"I hope that the people judge me -- and the council -- by our body of work."

But the bitter fight over development has spilled onto the editorial pages of the local community paper. And on Wednesday, a candidate debate devolved into a shouting match with the mayor walking out of the room.

Critics point to ugly mansions sprouting up along Mulholland Highway. Or mega-car dealerships popping up along the 101 Freeway. Or porch lights now shining over once-virgin ridgelines of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Perhaps no one is more central to the City Hall fight than Toby Keeler, 62, a former planning commissioner who has based his campaign on protecting open space.

But Keeler, it was revealed during the race, cast the deciding vote to approve the Shea Homes condos when he was a planning commissioner.

"The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is what is built was not what was approved," said Keeler, who said he is the only candidate endorsed by the Sierra Club and has shunned campaign donations from developers.

"The building in this city is not what was promised."

Barry Groveman, 53, an environmental attorney whose seat is up for grabs, once helped author a state clean-water bill and recently helped pass a Calabasas open-space preservation ordinance.

But he's also taken flack for accepting thousands from developers during a recent bid for the state Assembly.

He said the condo development was approved long before he was elected to the council.

"Do I like it?" he said. "Of course not. Who wants to lose the sheep on the hill? But if the project was entitled, we have to respect the law."

[e-mail]

[phone]