New Polo Field Built Illegally; County Wants Charges Filed

Members of the Calabasas Polo Club may end up playing their first chukker in court instead of at the new polo field they carved out of a canyon at the western edge of the San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday that they will seek a criminal complaint against the club operators, who they say built a regulation-size polo field, barn, corrals and a small grandstand with no building or grading permits.

Officials said the equestrian facility may have to be torn down and its hillside site re-graded if the Sherman Oaks development company that built it cannot prove that a certified geologist watched every step of the earthmoving.

County Building and Safety Division administrators said officials of Lycon Group--which owns the 26-acre site and built the polo complex--have been summoned to a conference with the district attorney’s office.

“We will be pressing the D.A. to file a criminal complaint,” said Jean Granucci, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works, which oversees the Building and Safety Division. It is a misdemeanor to build or grade without proper permits, punishable by a $1,000 fine or a six-month jail term.

Permit fees will be doubled if the plans are accepted and retroactive permits are issued, amounting to $2,456 for the grading permit and an uncalculated amount for the building permit, she said.

Officials of the Lycon Group, which has built many apartment projects in the Valley and elsewhere, said a county official, whom they could not identify, initially told them that they needed no permit.

“We’re home builders,” not polo-field developers, said Rob Franciscan, a Lycon Group partner. “We were told that we didn’t need a permit because we weren’t building a habitable structure . . . that for temporary equestrian facilities a permit was not necessary.”

Franciscan said the Calabasas Polo Club will not be open to the public. “It’s a private, for-our-own-personal-use thing” that will be removed in two or three years when his firm builds luxury homes on the site, he said.

According to Franciscan, his staff worked quickly to prepare plans within 30 days after a passing building inspector happened to notice the construction, a few hundred yards north of the Ventura Freeway between Parkway Calabasas and Las Virgenes Road.

Discovered in March

But building and safety officials say they discovered the illegal construction more than two months ago, on March 16. Plans for the structures were submitted after construction was completed, said Doug Browne, manager of the county’s Building and Safety Division office in Calabasas.

The grading plans were turned over to Browne on Tuesday afternoon by a representative of an engineering firm hired after the bulldozing was completed. Marites Avante, a civil designer for the firm, said 35,000 cubic yards were apparently moved.

“I asked my superior how come we’re getting this now and he had no idea,” she said as she stood at Browne’s counter to hand in the grading plans.

Other builders who have construction projects near the polo club also were surprised.

“They’re big boys,” said John Hurford, who is building a 385-home luxury estate project west of the Lycon property. “They know they have to have permits to do things.”