State Seeks Flexibility to Use Streisand Estate as Needed : Santa Monica Mountains: The singer envisions a conference center on the Malibu land she is donating. But officials want the freedom to put the 24 acres to other uses, or even sell the $15-million property.

State officials are seeking assurances that the Malibu estate Barbra Streisand has donated for an environmental research and conference center can be put to other uses or even sold if the entertainer’s vision for the site proves unworkable.

The state Department of Finance has asked the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the recipient of the gift, to make sure it is free to use the property as it sees fit should the conference center plan fall through.

The request was triggered by strong objections from the 60-member Ramirez Canyon Assn., representing homeowners near the Ramirez Canyon estate, who are concerned about the effects on their sylvan retreat.

In response, finance department officials said they want guarantees that the 24-acre estate will not become a costly white elephant if the conference center runs into roadblocks.

“Anytime we accept property, we look at what the (financial) consequence is to the state,” said Fred Klass, of the Department of Finance.

Officials want assurance that they “have an alternative if it’s not practical to use (the property) the way people have talked about,” Klass said.

The head of the conservancy and Streisand’s business manager said additional language sought by the finance department should not be an impediment.

The proposed language, to be added to a memorandum of understanding between Streisand and the conservancy, reads in part: “Donee (the conservancy) shall endeavor to use the property according to donor’s (Streisand’s) wishes . . . but donee shall not be restrained from additional or other public uses.”

The change is “very benign,” said Susan Keenberg, a partner in Jenkins & Keenberg, business manager for the entertainer.

“When you make a gift to the state or anyone else for that matter, you’re giving up control,” Keenberg said Monday.

It is a “pretty innocuous legal clarification,” said the conservancy’s executive director, Joseph T. Edmiston.

After several years of trying to sell the property, Streisand last month presented her estate to the conservancy, a state parks agency, for use as the Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies. The property includes five residences.

Edmiston, who said the estate had been appraised at $15 million, compared Streisand’s donation to the historic gifts of the 186-acre Will Roger estate and of Leo Carillo’s oceanfront property.

However, those sites became recreational magnets for millions of visitors, while the Streisand tract is to be used mainly by scholars in residence and conference-goers, and for paid special events such as weddings and film shoots. The Mountains Conservancy Foundation would maintain the property at an estimated cost of $160,000 per year.

Ramirez Canyon residents last week brought their concerns to Sacramento, where a state Senate subcommittee held a hearing on the conservancy’s operations.

Should the conservancy attempt to serve as host to groups of 30 to 40 people at the Streisand property, as it plans to, the added traffic and site modifications could threaten animals and plants in the mile-long canyon, resident Ed Niles said.

“We, as a canyon group, are certainly not opposed to Barbra Streisand donating her property,” said Niles, a 24-year resident of Ramirez Canyon. “Our problem is how in the world does one do this without destroying the environment that is there?”

But no promises were forthcoming from the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee, where both state Sens. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and Dan McCorquodale (D-Modesto) expressed reservations about the gift’s potential costs to the state.

“This is like giving someone a gift they have to pay for over a long period of time. . . . I think it would be nice if Ms. Streisand would also give an endowment,” Wright said after the hearing.

Some canyon residents were heartened by a letter from Keenberg promising that Streisand will try to ensure that “the bucolic nature of Ramirez Canyon is not changed.”