This Woodland Hills development has gone awry

Should the policy of Los Angeles be that they need to allow developers to develop wherever they choose? Is nothing sacred?

There is a beautiful area of land adjacent to the old Girard Water Reservoir on Mulholland Drive and San Feliciano Street in Woodland Hills. Part of it is all covered with old oak trees, and part of it is open land where an old stream used to run through before they built the highway.

My concern is that there are no parks in Woodland Hills west of Topanga and south of Ventura, but there are still many lots where people could build homes in this area which are not environmentally sensitive. A group called Save Oak Savannah formed, and through their efforts they were able to alert the city, who was so kind as to not allow condos to be built there. The developer should never have tried to even push condos in an area where there are only single-family homes.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy was able to acquire the portion just next to the reservoir where most of the oak trees are. This is great. This leaves the other portion on Mulholland to the developer to build a few homes on it to make his profit. I am not against development, but not in this environmentally sensitive area.

I recently spoke to the head of the Save Oak Savannah group, Dave Breliant, and he told me that in all probability the city would favor the developer to build the homes there, because that is the general policy of Los Angeles.

Why can't an environmentally important area be saved for the people? Perhaps the property is worth several million dollars to the developer. It is worth a lot more to the city of Los Angeles, if they had eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to care. It would be a win-win for the developer and the city if they could come to an agreement so the land could be made into a walking park for the health of our community. A few million dollars may sound like a lot, but we know today it is not much anymore so that some parkland could be saved. Claire Fishwick Woodland Hills