IS NEWHALL RANCH NEXT? AHMANSON FOES MAY SHIFT THEIR FOCUS NORTH.

Byline: Nicholas Grudin Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - A vast wilderness near Thousand Oaks where 3,050 homes were planned instead will open Monday as parkland - the culmination of a star-studded, decade-long campaign to preserve the Ahmanson Ranch property.

Thirty miles to the north sits a swath of land four times Ahmanson's size, where The Newhall Land and Farming Company plans more than 20,000 homes along the Santa Clara River, an environmentally sensitive watershed. Newhall Ranch opponents, who have fought the development for nearly a decade, predict the political clout that killed Washington Mutual's Ahmanson plan in Ventura County will now shift its focus north.

``Newhall Ranch is Ahmanson on a grander scale,'' said John Quigley, a Los Angeles environmentalist who gained renown when he camped in the limbs of a Santa Clarita Valley oak tree for 10 weeks to protest its destruction. The tree, coined Old Glory, was marked for destruction in order to expand a road that will connect existing developments to the planned Newhall Ranch community. Developers eventually agreed to relocate the tree.

``In the very near future, you will see a lot of the Ahmanson support coming and a lot more scrutiny on what's happening in Newhall.''

Approved by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1992, Ahmanson Ranch's 3,050 homes immediately were subject to a litany of lawsuits over the project's potential impacts to traffic, endangered wildlife and the region's watershed. In a 10-year span, opposition grew from grass roots to include President Bill Clinton, former Gov. Gray Davis and a host Hollywood leaders including director Rob Reiner and HBO chief executive Chris Albrecht, who co-chaired the group Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch.

However, Ahmanson developer Washington Mutual was resilient, and until this year the plan was on track for development. As pressure mounted, the development fizzled, and on Sept. 22, state negotiators agreed to buy the property for $150 million in order to preserve it as open space.

Ahmanson activists say that professional campaigning and widespread political support allowed them to succeed where other movements might have failed.

``What made the difference was that we got a professional staff, and we had people who knew how to run a campaign and had political connections,'' said Tsilah Burman, who served as the executive director of Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch.

``We had people devoting full time (hours) to the strategy, and to combating whatever Washington Mutual did. Most of these fights are grass roots against major companies, who have consultants and resources to hire P.R. people and that sort of thing. It was unique at Ahmanson that we matched that.''

Activists opposing Newhall Ranch agree that the Ahmanson opposition was better funded, focused and directed than their own has been.

``We're a little behind them on know-how, and we're a little behind on celebrity,'' said Lynne Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, a group that has led the battle against Newhall.

Newhall Ranch, which is scheduled to begin construction in 2006, was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors earlier this year. Like Ahmanson, Newhall developers have faced a decade of opposition - including protests from Ventura County - but its development appears imminent.

Since the project's approval, The Newhall Land and Farming Company was sold to national real estate giant Lennar Corp. for nearly $1 billion, a price tag that was based largely on the promise of the 12,000-acre wilderness becoming a ``pipeline'' for new homes, according to Lennar officials.

The deal will become official Dec. 19 pending a hearing at the California Public Utilities Commission.

Opponents to the project point out that the Newhall Ranch property, like Ahmanson, is home to endangered plant and animal life and that the regional ecosystem is equally fragile. Moreover, Newhall Land is proposing to build seven times as many houses on four times the area of Ahmanson Ranch, a proposition that County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky - the lone dissenter - called ``dumb with a capital `D''' due to its projected impact on traffic along the Golden State(5) and San Diego (405) freeways.

Plambeck says that, like Ahmanson, the Newhall property should be preserved as open space.

``The Santa Clara River is a treasure trove of species that only exist here,'' Plambeck said. ``It's the only place where the California sunflower still exists and it's among the only places where the San Fernando Valley spineflower still exists.''

Newhall officials and their supporters argue that the region's booming population - expected to triple in the next 25 years - must live somewhere, and the county Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in support. And even Ahmanson advocates realize that not all battles can be won.

``There's a lot of valuable properties up and down the state that would be wonderful to save, but there's never going to be enough money to save them,'' said Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills, who championed the Ahmanson preservation. ``Our state is growing at a rate of 600,000 people per year ... it's a balance.''

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, agrees.

``If local government wants to approve large developments, that's fine, we need housing. But it should be responsibly done,'' said Kuehl, who was instrumental in the state's purchase of Ahmanson.

Plambeck would like people to believe that Newhall Ranch is an irresponsible development, and with the Washington Mutual project successfully defeated, she hopes that people like Kuehl, Reiner, Pavley and others will shift their attention and energy to Santa Clarita.

``Now that Ahmanson is settled, people are going to start looking north at this last unchannelized river in Los Angeles County,'' Plambeck said.

``It's a ball that's beginning to roll that was not rolling in the past.''

Nicholas Grudin, [phone]

nicholas.grudin(at)dailynews.com

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(ran in Valley edition only) Newhall Ranch