Taking Proposal for Development to the People

By a 3-to-1 margin, Ventura voters empowered themselves last fall to block future hillside development.

Slow-growth activists crafted a ballot initiative that effectively prohibits the City Council from approving hillside projects. The measure requires voters’ approval to extend city services into the hilly areas north of downtown.

Activists had hoped the ordinance might even persuade would-be developers to drop their plans altogether.

But 300 heirs to the Lloyd and Dabney families’ property aren’t walking away just yet. Instead, they have decided to test the city’s newest growth-control ordinance by taking their 1,390-home proposal to voters in November.

As proposed, the ballot initiative would allow the landowners to proceed with the development in exchange for placing 80% of their 3,800 acres into permanent open space. To get the measure on the ballot, they will need about 9,000 signatures from city voters.

If voters reject the plan, the owners say they may simply sell the land piecemeal. A sliver of it, already inside city limits, does not need voters’ approval for hundreds of homes. Other pieces might be graded for farming. Or sold to oil companies.

“I don’t think those things are the best for the community or even for the family,� said Jim Anderson, a Los Angeles consultant representing the landowners. “But it’s not going to remain as it is. The family has gotten to the point where it needs to divest.�

Originally, Lewis Lloyd of Missouri settled in Ventura in 1886. One of his sons and the son’s partner, Joseph Dabney, were oilmen and ranchers.

Similar struggles are playing out elsewhere in Ventura County in response to the slow-growth movement that has taken hold over the past five years.

In Santa Paula, a developer is planning a November ballot initiative that would allow expansion into a canyon that residents two years ago had voted out of the city’s growth boundaries.

And in Simi Valley, the City Council is considering launching a fall ballot measure to compete against a plan to rein in the city’s growth boundaries. Tighter boundaries could derail plans for a 1,600-home development and business park north of that city.

In Ventura, the Lloyd-Dabney heirs have hired researchers to gauge public sentiment and determine how best to pitch their development concept. Anderson declined to share the results of the study.

While landowners envision six new neighborhoods in the hills--Midtown Heights, Hall Canyon, Poinsettia Terrace, Foothill Heights, Sexton Canyon and Sexton Canyon Estates--they have named their ballot campaign the “Open 80 Plan,� a reference to the percentage of land to be set aside for conservation.

“They have slick fliers in color saying they are big proponents of open space,� said Martha Zeiher, president of the opposition group Ventura Citizens for Hillside Preservation.

“They’re going to attempt to sell it to the public that way,� she said, quipping, “It’s not ‘Open 80,’ it’s ‘Build 1,390.’�

Zeiher and other opponents predict the homes would increase pollution and traffic, strain water supplies, harm wildlife and disturb the aesthetic of the sage-covered hills. Furthermore, they say the city needs more affordable housing, not upscale single-family plots.

Anderson rejects those arguments and said there is a demand for hillside homes.

“There’s been this notion in Ventura that if there are no homes built there will be no more people,� he said. “That doesn’t really stop people from coming. It just causes pressures in other areas.�

Finally, Anderson said, the landowners would be willing to sell the whole package, including development rights, for the right price. That’s $15,000 per acre, or about $60 million, he said.