Over 1,600 concerned residents, politicians, home-owners’ representatives and candidates filled St. Mel Church in Woodland Hills last Friday for a community forum on the proposed development at Woodland Hills Country Club.
Resident and founder of the grassroots Woodland Hills Collective, Elise Tyler, organized the event for a discussion of the proposed 398-unit project with 835 cars proposed by developers Ryan Ogulnick and Arribus Capital.
Tyler’s arguments against the project stem from it “attempting to be fast-tracked under AB 2011, which means no public meetings, no environmental review, no community feedback, no traffic study and no emergency evacuation study.”
AB 2011 calls for ministerial approval for eligible housing on commercial corridors with no CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) or community review. The bill was signed into law in September 2022.
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who voted for the bill, did not attend the meeting but told Valley News Group, “Our office is closely following the proposed Woodland Hills golf course housing development, and we have had several meetings with constituents and city officials over the last week. We understand that this proposed development is currently under review by the City of Los Angeles Planning Department. We have encouraged the developer and the city to engage in serious conversations about the future of this development.”
At the December 12 meeting, a five-member panel discussed the issues they felt were most germane to their opposition. Tyler said that ingress and egress from the development is through the winding “spaghetti streets” of the old Girard tract, and during a fire they would become gridlocked, like what happened in the Paradise and Palisades fires.
She also stated that under AB 2011 a development cannot be in a high fire zone, which the country club property definitely falls under.
Architect Lauren Coffman reiterated that the main concern is not the design or how many units they want to build, but again, it’s fire. “Eight hundred cars feeding into Canoga Avenue as the main outlet will form a bottleneck. There has been no evacuation analysis – this would be a failure.”
She said that AB2011 required a development to be in a “commercial corridor,” and the developers are trying to claim Canoga Avenue is a commercial zone based on its width. “This is an abuse of the 2011 process,” said Coffman.
Civil Engineer Alex Reyman discussed that the country club property is a landslide zone. “The golf course is like a sponge that feeds into the aquifer. What happens when it rains?” He also pointed out the club is in the Santa Monica Mountains Zone established in 1980 by the legislature, whom he said had no knowledge of the proposed development.
Filmmaker and lifelong Girard Tract resident Abteen Bagheri told the crowd, “We are not NIMBY’s. We are pro-development in Woodland Hills and welcome change. Under the Warner Center Specific Plan there should be 18,000 units built by 2035. We’re already developing homes in Warner Center, where they belong. We support that.”
Nick Streightiff, Woodland Hills Country Club member and golfer, related the history of the club from the early days of Girard until now. He said the community is going to lose a valuable resource, and he has reached out to various golf organizations who are willing to help maintain it.
One of the country club’s longest standing members, Chuck Underhill, said that equity partners were paid an initial $75,000 when Ogulnick purchased the club, and were promised another approximate $65,000, which they have not seen and have “no idea where the money is.”
Which led many residents to question the developer himself. Ogulnick has been fined in Orange County for a “dark money” campaign. He was issued a $87,000 fine from the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s campaign finance watchdog, for an alleged political money-laundering scheme in Santa Ana.
The City of Santa Ana also filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against Ogulnick’s firm, Dyer 18 LLC, for a homeless shelter he was building. The suit claimed he had a “ploy to thwart a homeless shelter.”
One of the last speakers at the forum was Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who said the developers had come to him several years ago with a proposal, and he asked them, “Have you gone to the Neighborhood Council? I always go through the process.”
In this case, Blumenfield said that the city council is effectively overruled because AB2011 is a state mandate. “I would love to have veto power in times like this, but the state has taken my control away.”
John Walker, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, ended the meeting by saying they are not averse to suing. “We sued Westfield over the gas station at The Village – and it got changed. We want good development,” he said, “Not stupid development, and this is a stupid development.”
