The historic King Gillette Ranch is now officially owned by local, regional and federal parks services. The purchase enables Malibu to buy Bluffs Park.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
Three decades of crushed hopes and frustration evaporated into a gentle spring breeze Saturday when recreation activists, parks officials and politicians sat under an oak tree to celebrate the new public ownership of what is described as the most beautiful place in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
The King Gillette Ranch- the centerpiece of a patchwork system of connected public parks stretching from Point Mugu to the Hollywood Bowl-is now owned by the National Park Service, California State Parks and the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority. Visitors are already being allowed into the 588 acres of grassland, oak-studded hills and gardens formerly owned by the Tokyo-based Soka International University.
Last week’s purchase was almost derailed when a crucial $8 million check fell out of its envelope in the mail between Sacramento and a Los Angeles title company. After a last-minute scramble, a stop payment order was issued and a new check expressed to Los Angeles to finish the deal on time.
Most importantly for Malibu, the complex real estate deal will end state ownership of Bluffs Park on Pacific Coast Highway, to be purchased by the city of Malibu. That would end a decades-long, on-and-off attempt by the State Parks Department to remove the athletics fields used by local children to make way for a regional park visitors’ center.
State Parks Director Ruth Coleman credited the city of Malibu for coming up with the final dollars for the state to cinch the $35 million Gillette deal.
“That was a big chunk of change that solved my money problems up here, and solved your baseball problems down there,” Coleman said.
“A year ago I fell off my chair when I heard that Soka University was in negotiations with [Supervisor] Zev Yaroslavsky to sell this ranch to the public,” said Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy chairwoman Elizabeth Cheadle at Saturday’s celebration. “We had come so close four times over the last 30 years to make this happen, and now it has.”
“This is a great day,” Yaroslavsky proclaimed. “This is the gold standard for parks acquisitions and I’m so pleased it happened on our watch.”
Cheadle said the public agencies had to scramble to come up with the $35 million for the former Soka property just 17 months after the Ahmanson Ranch property north of Calabasas was purchased for $150 million.
Once a major Native American village, Gillette Ranch is a natural bowl that is the crossroads of the mountain range, next to the intersection of Malibu Canyon-Los Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway. It is surrounded on three sides by Malibu Creek State Park and the Diamond X Ranch section of the SMMNRA.
The land was once owned by Bob and Dolores Hope, who gave it to a Catholic Church order in the 1960s. The Claretians sold it to a mausoleum company for development as a cemetery, which sold it in the 1970s to the Church Universal and Triumphant, which in turn sold it to Soka in 1989. Throughout all those transactions, state and federal agencies had tried unsuccessfully to buy it.
Soka had planned to build a 3,000-student university at the site, which prompted a successful condemnation lawsuit by parks authorities.
Yaroslavsky was feted Saturday for having secretly started new negotiations with Soka a year ago that resulted in last week’s purchase of what is viewed as the crown jewel of the entire mountain range and region.
“To put this purchase together right after the Ahmanson Ranch purchase is really something,” said Assemblywoman Fran Pavley. “Zev did it. He deserves all the credit. He is the one who kept the lines of communication open with Soka University.”
Soka was praised for having taken excellent care of the environment and structures, including a historic adobe ranch house from the late 19th century. The country estate was designed by famous architect Wallace Neff in the 1920s for shaving razor magnate King Gillette. SMMNRA Superintendent Woody Smeck said public hearings on uses for the gemstone park would take place soon. The National Park Service plans to move its headquarters and visitors center from an office complex behind a mall in Thousand Oaks to the ranch’s administrative building. It will share that building with State Park headquarters, relocated from overcrowded temporary headquarters in a historic ranch house in the state park.
State Parks Director Coleman told The Malibu Times the 15-bedroom Gillette ranch house could become a bed and breakfast, and an adjoining dorm now used by Soka graduate students would make an ideal low-cost youth hostel.