The Gift That Keeps On Taking
Don Bren’s Irvine Ranch Conservancy wants $20 million in public funds to manage land that he’s ‘giving’ the county
Stephen Francis Photography/Irvine Ranch Conservancy
All this can be yours . . .
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East of Irvine’s rote stucco glens, where the streetlights finally fade and the wild things still roam, 20,000 acres of jutting limestone peaks and dewy canyon bottoms strewn with live oaks testify to the way it was in Orange County.
Irvine Co. mogul Donald Bren has hung onto this rugged edge of his sprawling ranch for decades, largely because it was unbuildable. But he has used it well: to win the nation’s largest conservation tax breaks, to gain permits to slice and dice coastal plains into tract homes, and to win PR points for the natural wonders he has “given” and “preserved” and “set aside.” Time and again, company press releases have trumpeted the dedication of parts of this same swath of pristine open space by the chairman of the board.
Now, as his life’s work on the ranch winds down, Bren’s people have been in discussions with OC Parks about really giving the open space to the public. Not so fast, says the county’s conservation community. Last month, they persuaded the county Board of Supervisors to slow down and take a closer look at what the actual costs to the public of this “free gift” could be. Activists are now urging anyone with concerns about the costs of the land gift to write to their county supervisor.
But while their worries center on the price tag for managing the gifted land, there is another potential cost—a big one.
Bren’s lavishly funded, private Irvine Ranch Conservancy (IRC) has formally requested $20 million in taxpayers’ money from the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) to “restore” 2,000 acres of open space, nearly all of which is in that same 20,000-acre area on Bren’s massive ranch. That money would be the lion’s share of an estimated $29 million expected to roll in from a half-cent highway sales taxes for such work.
Measure M, renewed by voters in 2006, is expected to yield $11 billion over 30 years for everything from traffic lights to new freeway lanes. A tiny percentage of the highway-expansion portion is earmarked to buy or spruce up habitat similar to what will be destroyed by adding another lane on the 91 freeway, for instance.
Conservationists are not happy. They note the tax money would help keep Bren’s private conservancy in control of sensitive parts of public land and that it would be on top of millions more that county officials may pay the group to manage the land. Some who worked hard for passage of Measure M argue that they deserve a crack at the money, too.
“That sounds like a complete usurping of this fund,” says Gloria Sefton, founder of the much-smaller Saddleback Ranch Conservancy, which is fighting to preserve land not owned by Bren at the doorstep of the Cleveland National Forest. “I get pretty suspicious when there’s a privately run organization that is established and funded by the Irvine Co. that wants this public money.”
The IRC board also includes Bren’s real-estate senior vice president Dan Young and other top staff. If his conservancy keeps managing the lands, some fear the notoriously controlling Bren could still influence what happens on fragile land near his development projects.
“I’m all in favor of public access and public control,” says Sefton. “Private entities, they generally have a goal . . . usually having to do with their own economic well-being, and that may not always be aligned with what’s best for the public.”
IRC executive director Michael O’Connell strenuously disagreed. “Oh, there’s so much that is incorrect in that,” says O’Connell. “This is about where the highest priorities are for the land. It has nothing to do with the Irvine Co. at all. They’re not involved at all; they’re not promoting the [Measure M] proposal; they’re not working on it. This is our effort. . . . Dan Young and Donald Bren are not involved.”
O’Connell, a Yale-educated conservation scientist, says the funds would be used to rip out invasive weeds and plant native seeds and help to restore 2,000 acres of the highest-priority coastal sage scrub, grasslands and oak woodlands for wildlife “within the boundaries of the historic Irvine ranch.”
He says he hadn’t asked Bren to fund the project because he’d heard about the sales-tax funds and decided that was a better route. “Right now, there are better alternatives,” he says.
Some think the proposal is a bid by the conservancy to stay in existence because its multibillionaire godfather may be getting ready to cut off its allowance after turning over the open space to OC Parks. Bren has poured $20 million into the conservancy since its creation in 2004, including nearly $2 million this year, according to charitable tax returns.
