Inside what former owner Barbra Streisand affectionately called the Peach House, Claremont College Professor Monty Hempel has earned his keep for four months pondering a $15 million question.
Specifically: How can the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which took over the property two years ago, make the center pay for itself while respecting Streisand’s wish to use it for environmental study?
Confronting Hempel are the same problems the conservancy inherited when Streisand donated her 24-acre property in Ramirez Canyon in December 1993. Valued at $15 million, the Streisand estate was the largest gift in conservancy history.
Although the estate is stunning–with four houses in different architectural styles, five bridges over the year-round Ramirez Creek, a private screening room and full-size tennis court–access remains limited to the private, poorly paved Ramirez Canyon Road.
So for all intents and purposes its iron gate remains closed to the general public.
That leaves the conservancy with relatively few options, Hempel said. One might be to find one or more universities willing to sponsor an environmental think tank. Another might be to lease one or more of the buildings to the private sector for corporate retreats or residential use.
“Streisand wanted this for environmental education,” Hempel said. “But there is no library, no significant overnight lodging facilities or extensive computer facilities. What you do have is peace and quiet and a place to study.”
The conservancy uses the center as office space and to stage its own retreats, but critics question what business the state agency has in hanging on to a property that is for the most part off limits to the general public.
“A gift to the state of California means the people of California,” said Jill Swift, a former Sierra Club leader and frequent conservancy critic. “It does not mean (conservancy director) Joe Edmiston and his cohorts.”
Ruth White, president of the Ramirez Canyon Homeowners Association, a coalition of about 55 homeowners who object to increased traffic on Ramirez Canyon Road, says the property creates an unfair burden for the taxpayers.
“It’s inappropriate. We can’t pay for clinics. We can’t keep libraries open. We can’t have money tied up in an investment like this,” she said.
Conservancy officials defend their decision to accept Streisand’s donation, saying they have faith it eventually will succeed as an environmental study center.
Besides, if the conservancy were to sell the center, it would be of no benefit to the agency because any proceeds would go into state, not conservancy, coffers, said conservancy board member Jerry Daniel.
“Any money that we would get, we would never see a penny of it,” he said.
Conservancy officials concede, though, that two years after Streisand made the gift, the Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies has yet to blossom into a full-fledged retreat where scholars and leaders can study environmental issues.
Besides access problems, the chief obstacle to making the center work has been money.
Just after the donation, the conservancy hired Madelyn Glickfeld–a state Coastal Commission member–as academic director of the center, agreeing to pay her $65,800 per year.
But after the $2 billion state bond initiative Proposition 180 failed in 1994, leaving the wish lists of dozens of publicly funded environmental agencies unattainable, Glickfeld was laid off in June.
Originally, the conservancy had hoped to extend Kanan Dume Road into the estate to solve the access issue, deputy director Belinda Faustinos said. But the agency couldn’t raise the $200,000 to $300,000 needed for the project.
Unable to work out a compromise with hesitant Ramirez Canyon homeowners and with no plans for a new access road, Daniel said the agency’s hands are tied.
“It’s a very disturbing issue to us, and it shouldn’t be that way. But we have neighbors who have made our lives miserable, and who are refusing to relent on that issue,” Daniel said.
Recently, in a move conservancy officials say will save about $50,000 a year over the next two years, the agency has transferred its executive offices from Solstice Canyon to the estate’s Barwood House, named for Streisand’s production company. The nonprofit Mountains Conservancy Foundation has two offices in the home known as The Barn, a rustic wooden structure.
But maintenance and utility costs alone at the property next year are projected to cost more than $57,000, according to a conservancy budget report. Streisand reportedly paid twice that for maintenance, including a full groundskeeping crew, Daniel said.
Recently, Hempel made his first report to the conservancy board of directors and the staff. He plans a complete report on his ideas in January, before he moves back to Claremont.
He said Glickfeld, the former center director, contacted him at the Claremont College Center for Politics and Economics, where he teaches international and domestic environmental policy in the graduate school, to help determine the center’s future.
He was eager to accept the deal the conservancy offered: He would spend his planned semester-long sabbatical at the Peach House for the price of a $100 utility fee, in return for studying ways to make the Streisand Center viable. His wife, Marilyn, joined him.
“If you’re going to study environmental subjects, it’s hard to do that in a glass skyscraper,” Hempel said. “It’s better in a natural setting and with a landscape where it’s easier to think about the interface between the urban and rural communities, which is the theme I’m exploring.
“I want to make this a model of a Camp David here, for the environment,” he said.
Hempel has recommended establishing an academic research project at the center that might study such issues as community revitalization, land-use planning, ecosystem management, immigration and population growth.
He has suggested the center host a workshop for a nonprofit environmental policy research group to pitch the idea of an academic consortium coordinated through the center. He hopes Claremont College will become a founding member.
Hempel suggests the conservancy seek nonprofit foundation grants so it can host college students for leadership seminars and university professors to give special lectures.
He also has contacted environmental groups in hopes they would use the property as a retreat.
But the access limits mean groups would have to remain small, at 15 to 20 people, he said.
To make the center financially self-sufficient would take a great deal more, Hempel and conservancy officials admit.
To that end, both are hoping to offer the property as a retreat for corporate executives.
“Why not,” Hempel said, “if they’re willing to pay the freight?”
The property has earned $39,880 since July 1 this year for some events, Faustinos said. GTE recently granted funding for a teleconferencing facility on the Peach House’s second level, where Streisand once had a private screening room.
The agency also hopes to lease one home on the property–the three-bedroom Art Deco house–either to a university for a visiting scholar program or as a private residence, Faustinos said. Rent could range from $6,000 to $7,500 a month, or more if a university “adopts” the house. But so far, there have been no takers.
