“Their Lease on Life”
by Kathleen Lund-Seeden
Photos by Robert E. Clark / Staff Photographer
Land sale may force Topanga residents from rural haven
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| Jamie Fox is one of the many who have grown to love the lifestyle in rural, relatively unspoiled Topanga Canyon. |
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| Rustic-looking mailboxes line the entry to an area of homes off Topanga Canyon. Residents may be forced to move. |
Residents of lower Topanga Canyon have fought fires, floods
and even drug dealers.
But there’s one thing they can’t defeat: the sale of their
property.
A partnership that owns the Los Angeles Athletic Club has agreed
to sell 1,600 acres to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for $25 million.
The land extends about 2 1/2 miles inland from Pacific Coast Highway. The deal
is due to close next Jan. 31.
Ranch houses and bungalows and businesses like The Topanga
Ranch Market — all being leased on a month-to-month basis — are part of the
sale.
“We’re in limbo again,” complained Mitchell Sonners, a
garment manufacturer who has lived in the Rodeo Grounds neighborhood for 14 1/2
years.
Sonners and the other 90 families that live nearby moved
there to hear owls hoot and watch deer feed on their well-tended organic
vegetable gardens.
They willingly put up with old, run-down houses — or spend
thousands of dollars fixing them — because they like to smell the wild anise
sprouting near bougainvillea gone wild and to see the rural mailboxes lining
the entrance to their private dirt road.
“When I wake up I hear woodpeckers and see hawks fly by. One
day an egret showed up in the yard out of the blue. Where else can you get that
in L.A.?” Sonners asked.
Many have called Conservancy officials. A few have tried to
contact their landlord. But most are just waiting to see what happens next
before they consult a lawyer, draw up a petition or take any other action to
save their homes.
“We’re hoping the Conservancy will like having a nice little
market and motel,” said Bill Rice, manager of the Topanga Ranch Motel.
Many of the motel’s tenants have lived there for several
years — one woman since 1952, he said.
“I’m quite concerned,” said Ray Craig, who owns the motel
and the Topanga Ranch Market next door. “I’ve almost got my life’s savings tied
up in my business.”
Ruth Kilday, executive director of the Mountains Conservancy
Foundation, which hopes to buy the property with state, federal and private
funds, said the fate of residents and business owners will be up to the final
property owners. The land will be turned over ultimately to state or federal
parks officials, she said.
Alex Auerbach, spokesman for LAACO Ltd., said “for the
residents, there is plenty of time to look for other homes.” He said the
Conservancy may make arrangements for businesses along Pacific Coast Highway
like the Malibu Feed Bin and Topanga Plants to remain.
The people of the close-knit Topanga community, where
everybody knows almost everybody else, have contended with fires just about
every fire season. And 10 years ago, many of them lost everything when Topanga
Creek flooded.
Once, a drug dealer moved in and residents made it very
clear that he was not wanted. After some legal maneuvering, he moved out.
The people who live there aren’t hippies or low-lifes,
residents said. They’re film producers, engineers, actors and housewives, many
with children.
Residents have known all along that their stay was
temporary. Their corporate landlord, LAACO Ltd., has made that very clear.
Residents pay comparatively low rents — about $750 per month — in exchange for
agreeing to maintain their own homes and roads. Homes are repaired or remodeled
at their own expense.
Getting Attached to It
But when you live in a place for 10 years or so, you sort of
get attached to it, they said.
“These are people’s homes. These are people’s livelihoods,”
said resident Jamie Fox, a legal assistant who saved her house from a flood and
transformed it from a weed-infested shell to a rustic ranch house. “I don’t
want everything I’ve worked for to die.”
Fox likes to get up early, hike up a hill, watch the sun
rise over the city “and thank God I don’t live there,” she said.
A native Hawaiian, she said the Topanga Canyon land is the
closest she could find to her homeland.
“I’ve got three dogs, two cats and one bird and a lifestyle
that’s not going to move to the Valley,” she said.
Scott Dittrich has lived in the Rodeo Grounds neighborhood,
one of four residential areas in the lower canyon, since 1973. He has spent
$30,000 to fix up his 1,800-square-foot redwood house, rebuilding the kitchen
and installing a gas heating system.
He was there in 1979 when the state served notice that it
was taking over their homes. The deal never went through.
Watching the Deer
A producer of sports films, Dittrich leases his house and
another property with several buildings on it, which he uses as his office and
film-editing studio. He and his wife Sharon and their two young children enjoy
watching the deer. They had to give up owning cats because coyotes kept
stealing them.
“We’re concerned. We’re worried about what will happen to us
when you look at what’s happened to land values in the area over the years,” he
said.
Finding another place to live that offers a rural lifestyle
probably would cost a million dollars or more, residents said.
Despite their concern, residents and business owners said
they are happy the land will go to the Conservancy for a park, rather than to a
developer for condominiums.
“It’d be great to leave everything the way it is forever, if
you’re just thinking of yourself,” said Warren Roberts, owner of the Reel Inn
Fresh Fish Market and Restaurant. “I make great money here — the place is
always packed.
“But I don’t mind giving that up for a park.”
