Vision of the Future May Be Only Mirage

CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. —  The considerable ambitions of this dusty speck in the western Mojave Desert may have been thwarted by a ground squirrel, a tortoise and six angry landowners.

The state’s third-largest city in land area, with a population of about 10,000, California City has been annexing its way across the high desert and now covers more than 200 square miles. Few noticed until the city annexed, then condemned, 4,500 acres of Kern County desert to make way for a Hyundai auto proving grounds that would add $500,000 to the town’s small tax base.

Some property owners were disturbed when the city’s redevelopment agency invoked its power of eminent domain to label their empty tracts “urban and blighted,” then sold the property to the automaker. Though most sellers were happy to unload their land, six holdout landowners have filed suit in federal court seeking to halt construction of the test track. The city is suing the landowners in state court, hoping to keep alive a project city officials say is vital to the life of a moribund town.

But the more significant roadblock to the $50-million project could be two homely, rare animal species that live in this part of the high desert. Hyundai intends to bulldoze the ground for its 6.4-mile oval track on top of burrows for the protected California desert tortoise and the Mojave ground squirrel. The state and federal governments have approved the project, but conservation groups have challenged it in court. That litigation, too, is pending.

None of this bodes well for California City. The increase in growth and jobs seen in much of the Antelope Valley has not occurred here, where unemployment is 11.4%. City boosters used to predict this would be “the next Palm Springs” or “the next Las Vegas,” but now most would be grateful to be the next Lancaster.

For this town, home for 50 years to land speculators, business schemers and con men, the Hyundai test track represents the fulfillment of the promise mocked by its 600 miles of paved -- but empty -- streets and vacant subdivisions.

“The track is going to be good for us,” said City Manager Jack Stewart. “We’ve got a water system and a road system built to handle 50,000 people. It’s just that 32,000 haven’t shown up yet.”

The west Mojave landscape is pocked with busted boomtowns and bizarre projects orphaned by their architects. Towns like California City -- whose name announces its aspirations -- were a product of the state’s post-World War II population boom.

California City sits atop a large aquifer, which once irrigated vast alfalfa fields. In 1958, the town’s first booster already was boasting of sprawling residential villages, parks, medical clinics and a local campus of the Cal State system.

Today, the town is still waiting for its first supermarket.

Mayor Larry Adams blames much of the controversy about the Hyundai project on environmentalists who care more for the desert tortoise than the welfare of his town, which can afford only 13 police officers.

“I’ll tell you what, I’d like to borrow some money from the tortoise because he’s got so much of it,” Adams said, referring to an endowment from Hyundai for the purchase of land for the tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

The tortoise -- California City’s official mascot -- is listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, and the squirrel is considered threatened under state definitions. Permits from state and federal wildlife agencies were required for the Hyundai project -- a process that can take up to four years.

To speed things along, the city and Hyundai hired former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, now an attorney in Washington, D.C. It was Babbitt who, while secretary of the Interior, helped fashion California’s groundbreaking tortoise habitat conservation plan. With his involvement, the permit came through in less than two years.

Conservationists say haste led to an inadequate assessment of the project’s effect on the tortoise.

“Babbitt came in and strong-armed people and rammed this plan through,” said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center For Biological Diversity, which is challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in court.

Judy Hohman, the agency’s division chief for the Mojave-Great Basin District, agreed that the permitting process went unusually quickly but said the permit was issued properly.

“At some point the service decided that this project was in fact a priority and that we should focus attention on it and get it done,” she said. “We did.”

The permit allows up to 54 tortoises to be removed from the site in exchange for the future purchase of 3,200 acres, where the animals would be relocated.

So far, 23 tortoises have been found during construction and placed in temporary burrows. Biologists critical of the plan say relocation can traumatize the tortoises and expose them to disease.

“Tortoises are extremely sensitive to moving; once they establish a home range they stay there their entire lives,” said Michael Connor, executive director of the Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee, which operates a preserve north of here. “The [tortoise] population has collapsed in the west Mojave, so much that federal authorities should be considering if the species should be upgraded to endangered. I’m very concerned.”

Hyundai chose its site, company spokesman Chris Hosford said, because it could not find enough contiguous land elsewhere in the area, and it wanted the track relatively near its Irvine design complex.

The city obliged. “We entered eminent domain in order to acquire the parcel within the Hyundai project area,” Stewart said.

The city didn’t grow with the annexation -- county authorities required it to give up land elsewhere. But after it obtained the land, California City placed it within the borders of the redevelopment agency’s 38,000-acre planning zone. The entire town core of low-slung strip malls and scattered homes is within the zone administered by the redevelopment agency, an arm of city government whose function is to stimulate economic growth.

The agency then invoked eminent domain -- the right of the government to condemn private property and take it for public use -- forcing 202 property owners to sell their parcels.

This was not the first time the city had annexed land -- 15,000 acres were added that way in the mid-1980s, the mayor said -- but it was the first time it had condemned land. The use of eminent domain is controversial, acknowledged John Shirey, director of the California Redevelopment Assn., because it trumps many rights of private property owners.

“People will look askance at eminent domain being used for a private purpose,” he said.

But it’s perfectly legal, said Todd Amspoker, the city’s attorney in the case. Adams concurred: “We were looking at the easiest way to make it work,” he said.

Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby is one of the state’s most fervent opponents of redevelopment agencies, which he calls “cockamamie schemes.” Norby, author of the book “Redevelopment: The Unknown Government,” serves as statewide director of Municipal Officials for Redevelopment Reform.

In his view, California City cheated property owners out of fair market value for their land.

“This is a private, foreign, multibillion-dollar corporation that has an American government entity forcibly acquiring land on its behalf,” Norby said. “If Hyundai wanted the land, it should have bought it from the landowners.”

The six holdout landowners say they have always been willing to sell, but they’re rankled by the process.

After receiving letters informing them of the eminent domain proceedings and then appraisals, most landowners were offered $900 to $1,000 an acre, or 2 cents a square foot.

One owner, a former realtor, did his own research and concluded that $20,000 an acre would be fair. If a multibillion corporation wants to develop the property, he said, it must have great value.

But under California law, the appraiser is required only to consider the current market value of the land, and not its potential value.

Property owner Barry Redfearne said he wouldn’t be bamboozled like his ancestors were. His grandfather bought land sight unseen because he was told it contained oil -- which it didn’t.

“The way the city has gone about this stinks,” said Redfearne, 70, a former Navy pilot who now owns 20 acres of his grandfather’s land. “This is so opposite to the American way of doing business. If Hyundai wanted the land, why didn’t they sit down and talk to us?”

Some in town have portrayed the holdouts as greedy, fighting the sale only to drive up the price for their land. “We have been described as greedy. I take exception to that,” said Jim Swain, 72, of Burbank. Swain’s five acres is part of what would be the northeast curve of the test track.

“If you’ve got some property and someone comes along and tries to steal it from you, it gets your hackles up,” Swain said. “At this point, I realize that Hyundai is going to win out. They have deep pockets and we are little people. But it’s annoying ... for someone to tell you, ‘You are going to sell this land and this is what you are going to sell it for.’ ”

Although city officials anticipated that the condemnation of land would be controversial, they said they were baffled by the opposition to a project that they say would generate up to 50 full-time and 50 part-time jobs that would add $500,000 to the tax base.

“We look upon this as a benefit to the whole area,” said City Council member Mike Edmiston.

The 7.5-square-mile complex would include the six-mile track, a hazard course and a 24,000-square-foot facility for other testing.

Hosford said the proving grounds would be shared with Hyundai’s corporate cousin Kia. One of the vehicles the automakers want to test is Kia’s first pickup truck: the Mojave.