Nearly 50 residents from the Via de las Olas bluffs neighborhood crowded into Mort’s Oak Room Monday night to defend their turf and denounce efforts by other Palisades residents to create an off-leash dog park on the infamous Oxy site along PCH. Reiterating the numerous fears and objections that were expressed in a front-page article in last Thursday’s Palisadian-Post, audience members from Friends over to Mt. Holyoke argued that the proposed three-acre dog park near the mouth of Potrero Canyon would bring incalculable damage to their quality of life and could ultimately destroy homes along the bluffs. The two-hour meeting was hosted by PaliDog, the ad hoc Community Council committee that has spent five months researching potential dog-park locations in Pacific Palisades. When their investigation began to focus on the flat, undeveloped piece of land where Occidental once hoped to drill for oil, they were quickly opposed by BRAD (Bluff Residents Against Danger). “Our objective is to enhance the community,” PaliDog chairman Norm Kulla said in his welcoming remarks Monday night. “We all feel proud to live here and we want to make it better”-by having a park where dog owners can gather while their dogs exercise and socialize. “Whatever we do will have to be supported by the community.” Kulla said he had read numerous e-mail alerts from various opponents of the Oxy site and found two main themes in their concerns. “One is unrelated to our proposed park, and that is the history of the city’s failure to address problems on the Via bluff,” Kulla said. As described by BRAD members, these ongoing grievances include concerns about bluff stability, the fact that Via de las Olas has been withdrawn from public use and is no longer maintained by the City of Los Angeles, and there’s little or no patrol and enforcement of the posted signs restricting traffic to the street. (See Letters to the Editor, page 2.) “The second area of concern,” Kulla said, “has to do with the park location itself,” and especially the existence of an overgrown trail that traverses the hillside from Lombard on Via de las Olas down to the Oxy site, near the mouth of Potrero Canyon. PaliDog members felt that this trail would never be an issue, since the 10-minute hike each way would discourage most potential dog-park users. A parking lot would be built at the park itself, with traffic-signal access off PCH. Nevertheless, BRAD members warned that the trail would actually prove popular and would attract unknown hordes of people who would park for free on Via de las Olas and adjoining streets in order to access the dog park. This additional vehicle traffic would “further exacerbate bluff instability,” said Tom Giovine in his two-page complaint, while inviting “wayward and unseemly people to roam the bluff streets.” “You’re putting my home and the neighborhood in jeopardy,” said Regina McConahay, who noted that she lives “at Ground Zero,” across from the Lombard trailhead. “We are big dog lovers and we support an off-leash site-but not on the Oxy site.” Ines Boechat, a professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA, and her husband, Vicente Gilsanz, a professor at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, have lived on Via de las Olas since 1984 and spoke out about “the health hazard raised by the dissemination of bacteria contained in fecal material eliminated by potentially thousands of dogs frequenting the park, that would spread through water and the environment. It would particularly affect young and elderly individuals who live in the proximity of the park.” The threat of litigation also arose when Giovine asked, “Who’s going to compensate the homeowners if the bluffs are destabilized by all the cars and people? Whoever is responsible for building this dog park and approving this dog park, we will hold them responsible. We will absolutely sue.” He did say, however, that “I’m not against a dog park,” and he encouraged PaliDog to take a more serious look at Temescal Gateway Park above Sunset. Attorney George Soneff urged Kulla to pursue Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy which oversees public uses in Temescal. “You should put community pressure on Joe-get him in here to answer questions,” Soneff said. Trying one last time to overcome the polarized atmosphere in the room, Kulla told the audience: “I know that you have overwhelming concerns, and there’s a huge problem in your neighborhood-Via de las Olas. Your perception is that the Oxy dog park would make worse the existing problems. But are you willing to work with me on solutions?” “Absolutely not,” Giovine responded. “Well, if this isn’t going anywhere, I’m not crazy,” Kulla said. “I don’t want to keep banging my head against a wall. The dog park idea will evolve, we’ll find a solution. But since your community is so strong against the Oxy site, we won’t go forward unless you have a change of heart. Any ideas, we invite that. We’ll keep plugging away.”
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