Clock ticking to preserve land

Time may be running out on efforts to preserve a 14-acre parcel of pristine hilltop property adjacent to Helen Putnam Regional Park known as La Cresta Ridge.

A local citizens coalition working to purchase the land on behalf of the city is hoping that the property owners will give them a 50 percent discount. The Save the La Cresta Ridge and Ravine Coalition is a nonprofit that received a $1 million matching grant from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District in 2008. They hoped the funds would account for half of the negotiated purchase price since, unlike most matching grants where the requesters match the grant amount awarded by the county, this particular grant relied on the sellers providing a 50 percent discount to make up for the rest of the purchase price.

Stewart Martin, land acquisition specialist for the county, said that California Water Service, or CalWater - owners of the ridgetop property that borders the 216-acre Helen Putnam Regional Park - initially agreed to give the coalition a 50 percent discount, based on an undisclosed amount they believed the property to be worth.

But after the county performed its own appraisal - a condition of all matching grants - Martin said that the appraisal values of the land did not match up.

"They had given us reason to believe that they were going to accept a 50 percent discount, but that was based on a dollar amount they put forward and we hadn't done our appraisals yet," Martin said. "We have no idea where they got their number from. They never gave us proof of an appraisal; they just told us their number. We went through our appraisal process and put forth an offer based on our appraisal."

The coalition first attempted to purchase the property back in 2010. Using the county's grant money, the coalition made an initial offer - likely around the $2 million indicated by the amount of the grant the county awarded, though all parties refused to disclose the actual amount as negotiations are still in progress. CalWater rejected that offer at the time, saying it was too low.

Martin said that he believed the offer had been fair, but that CalWater wanted to wait until the real estate market rebounded and the property was worth more, to accept any offers.

Coalition leader Michael Sunday said his group is in the process of hammering out another offer to present to CalWater. He has been working to purchase the property for over a decade and said that the grant money they are hoping to use to purchase the land is expiring on December 6, 2014.

Fellow coalition organizer Ann Hogan said that from the time any purchase agreement is struck with the CalWater, it takes a full year to complete the paperwork and finalize the deal. That means that in order for the county's grant money to used, a deal would need to be made by the end of this year.

"You only have a certain amount of years to use the grant money awarded by the county. We could probably reapply for the grant if time runs out, but it's a big, six-month process and it's very time-consuming," Hogan said.

Hogan added that county grants are very competitive and said that if her group can't take advantage of the funds in time and has to reapply, it would likely have to compete against other groups for the same grant money.

Martin said that the purpose of the deadline is so that groups don't hold on to grant funding indefinitely. But, he said, as long as the coalition and CalWater have a deal in place, the county would be willing to extend the deadline for grant dispersal by a few weeks or so.

He emphasized that a firm deal with a set date to transfer ownership of the property would have to exist before the county would grant an extension.

Shawn Heffner, a CalWater spokesman, said he sees no reason why his company would not negotiate with the La Cresta coalition, as long as the new offer it makes is fair.

"We are still open to negotiating," he said. "We've been just kind of waiting in the wings for the group to come back to us with a proposal."

Heffner said that if CalWater doesn't hear from the group, it may try to sell the land on the open market, but added, "We don't really have any incentive to do that right now. We would still like to work with the city."

(Contact Janelle Wetzstein at argus@arguscourier.com)