POINT / COUNTERPOINT : Should Park Service Participate in Swap?

Siegfried Othmer, 50, is a physicist who has lived in Sherman Oaks since 1970. As a member of groups such as Save Open Space, the Save the Mountain Park Coalition, the Sierra Club and the Topanga Canyon Docents, he has been active in efforts to preserve and expand the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Othmer lives with his wife, Susan, and his son Kurt, 14. Another son, Brian, 21, is a college student.

Q. What do you think the land exchange means for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and for National Park Service efforts to preserve and expand the park?

A. To us it seems to entirely reverse the Park Service’s obligation and to totally turn around the process from what it should be according to law. What the Park Service should do, according to law, is to try to preserve the resources in these mountains even when they don’t buy them.

We feel like there is no land in the Santa Monica Mountains which is more highly protected from development than Jordan Ranch. There is currently no public road which reaches Jordan Ranch. The land exchange, and the road, would be required in order to permit such a large-scale development.

Here the issue is clear-cut: The Park Service had control over a particular development, and they did not exercise it. In fact, they worked cooperatively with the developer to promote the development.

Q. Are you saying that in their efforts to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains, parks officials should restrict landowners’ ability to develop property the government does not acquire?

A. Of course. The fact is that certain uses of that land are still inappropriate because the land is a natural resource. And hence, those uses should not be approved, regardless of whether the parks acquire the land.

Q. What do you find inappropriate about the proposed development of Jordan Ranch?

A. It really doesn’t matter what Siegfried Othmer thinks. We have, again, an established process, and that is the Park Service’s land-protection plan. The resources in this area were surveyed, and it was determined which properties should be acquired and which should be protected in some other way. And Jordan Ranch was supposed to be acquired.

Obviously, Bob Hope was willing to sell at the right price. But the Park Service is constrained to buy at appraised value. Bob Hope always thought he could do better than that. Certainly I feel that the power of condemnation should be considered in this case.

Q. What about the argument that, considering the financial risks involved in a condemnation fight, the land exchange is the best way to assure that Hope lands such as China Flat become publicly owned?

A. The public has China Flat, in the sense that the natural resources are being preserved now. If this land exchange goes through, there would be public ownership of it. However, let’s remember that China Flat is a 12-mile round trip from the entrance of Cheeseboro Canyon. Very few people will get there. We should regard it in natural resource terms, and the resources are best protected, if you don’t have an intensive development next door.

I’m taking a larger view here. The fact of the matter is that the acquisition of China Flat for the public almost makes the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Park Service look like another special interest. In the larger picture, the impact of these developments on quality of life in that area, and so forth, will be devastating. But developers know that if they square things with environmentalists, they are not likely to get much opposition from other quarters.

Q. Doesn’t the addition of Bob Hope’s lands in Corral Canyon in Malibu and Runkle Ranch, in the Santa Susana Mountains northwest of the city of Los Angeles, make the land - swap deal difficult to refuse?

A. One has to be thrilled that Bob Hope is finally negotiating with park agencies. However, we still see a significant downside to the existing agreement, and we don’t regard it as the last word.

First of all, it points out what we have been saying all along, which is that the developer has no other access to Jordan Ranch. Second, this agreement holds the gun to the head of the Park Service and says: “Approve this or the public will lose more than 5,000 acres.� And we think that again clarifies the kind of inappropriate pressure that has been put, and continues to be put, on the Park Service to effect a particular outcome.

The recent agreement also reveals that Bob Hope is in fact very much in the saddle with regard to all of his properties. Our clamor for these lands has now created the political climate in which condemnation proceedings against Bob Hope would not be viewed unfavorably.

Q. What are your concerns about possible precedents the land exchange could set for the Park Service?

A. It is not a matter of how some conservationists feel about it, and it’s not a matter of whether Corral Canyon is more important than Jordan Ranch or Runkle Ranch is more important than Jordan Ranch. If you were to conjure up all your fears about what would happen if developers can randomly propose land exchanges to the Park Service, every one of the nasty things in which the public interest would get lost has, in fact, happened.

Let me put it another way. If Donald Trump wanted to put his own private chalet in Yosemite Valley, and he said: “Park Service, what do you want in exchange? I will buy it for you.� We would say that question has no answer. There is nothing that he could buy that would allow such a land exchange to take place. I don’t care if he offered to buy us the Amazon River Valley.

Q. Many would say the 59 acres involved in the land swap have relatively less value than a Yosemite or even most other park holdings in the mountains.

A. That gets us precisely into this muddy area of what is high-quality parkland and what is less-quality parkland. And that we have no business touching. This is our parkland. This is the nation’s parkland; this is California’s parkland. This is parkland for 13 million Southern Californians. And the government has no business trading it away.

BACKGROUND Potomac Investment Associates wants to swap 1,100 acres of the Jordan Ranch in eastern Ventura County for 59 acres of National Park Service land in Cheeseboro Canyon. Potomac would use the canyon property for an access road to the ranch, where the developer wants to build a golf course and 750 homes. That deal--the linchpin of a larger land swap that would put a total of 5,700 acres in the Santa Susana and Santa Monica Mountains now owned by comedian Bob Hope into public ownership--needs federal approval. Some environmentalists are staunchly opposed to the land swap.