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Time running out for Las Positas Park

11/6/98

By SCOTT HADLY

NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

It's a treasure, they say, acres and acres of undeveloped rolling hills on the edge of the city. But members of Las Positas Park Foundation

Paragliders use the popular take-off spot at the bluffs above Cliff Drive on Thursday. The Las Positas Friendship Park Foundation is struggling to buy the property.

said Thursday that if they don't come up with $500,000 by the end of the year they will have to say goodbye to that half of the park. "Foreclosure is looming," said Lynn Holley, the foundation's executive director. "We need help from the community now or we'll lose it."
      The last payment on the 136-acre portion of the 230-acre park is due by New Year's Eve, Holley said. If the group can't raise the half a million dollars it owes for the land between the park's main entrance and Cliff Drive, the property will be returned to the former owners. The foundation bought the property from the California Province of the Society of Jesuits in 1994 for $1.5 million. "This is serious. It's going to be a mad scramble to come up with that money," Holley said.
      The foundation had hoped to avoid the sort of last-ditch effort to raise money that occurred two years ago with the purchase of the Wilcox property - now referred to as the Douglas Family Preserve.
      The $3.6 million public campaign to buy the coastal bluffs across Cliff Drive from Las Positas Park culminated with a last-minute $600,000 donation from actor Michael Douglas. "If somebody could come forward like that, it would be wonderful," Holley said. For a donation of a few million dollars, the foundation will hand over naming rights for the whole park, she said. The hope is to set up an endowment fund to perpetually operate the park once the purchase is completed. The foundation also has more modest fund-raising incentives, including the naming of benches or memorial trees in the park for $1,000. The organization just received 160 oak saplings that it hopes will attract donors, Holley said.
      The Jesuits had substantially reduced the price of the land, which had at one time been listed for as much as $7 million. The foundation also was allowed to pay over four years without interest. "They've been very helpful, but they do have every right to foreclose," Holley said.
      Although the foundation knew the balloon payment was coming, it held off intensive fund-raising efforts until the Wilcox property was bought, she said. Now the group feels as if it is competing for money with the backers of the purchase of the Carpinteria Bluffs. "The difference between those two properties and this one is this is an active park," she said.
      More than 60,000 people a year use the park, which boasts three softball fields, two soccer fields, a veterans memorial, BMX track, a picnic area, a grove for weddings and miles of nature trails. The original 94-acre park was built in the early 1980s on top of Santa Barbara's old city dump. The land is leased to the private non-profit foundation, which runs the park for about $350,000 a year.
      The park and the Douglas Family Preserve are part of a seamless expanse of open space used by hikers, horseback

Chad Bastian tends the grass at (the Mesa Flight Area of) Las Positas Park on Thursday.

riders and hang gliders. "When you get up on top of those bluffs, you've got a fantastic 360 degree view," said Tom Elder, after taking his two black Labradors for a walk along one of the trails. Elder, who was married at the park and regularly plays softball there, had no idea that the foundation was scrambling for cash. "You'd think that if Michael Douglas could come up with $600,000 for the Wilcox property, somebody else could come forward for this," he said.
      Members of the foundation's volunteer board of directors have been having fund-raising meetings, said board president Fred Clough. "We certainly are optimistic that we'll be able to raise that amount, but when you've got less than two months to raise that kind of money it's pretty serious," Clough said.