Five years ago Ross Bagdasarian Jr. had no idea renovations on his East Mountain Drive estate would stir up a controversy that would engulf Montecito’s most influential community group, county planning, and ultimately the Board of Supervisors.
But in February of 2009, the driving force behind the Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon and movie franchise, found himself on the wrong end of some of Montecito’s most influential residents.
But just like the clever and cagey Alvin Seville, the optimistic and good-natured Bagdasarian found a way out of his tangled, largely self-induced predicament, and he learned a valuable lesson along the way.
Bagdasarian, son of Ross Bagdasarian Sr. the original creator of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, has been credited with keeping the Chipmunks brand alive with an 80s TV show, several animated movies and three hit live-action films, with names such as “The Squeakquel” and last December’s “Chipwrecked.”
The singing, dancing rodents have also created dozens of albums featuring the falsetto-voiced trio covering songs ranging from Led Zepplin’s heavy metal “Rock and Roll” to the traditional holiday carol “Over the River and Through The Woods.”
But it was river and woods that landed the producer in hot water with the most influential neighborhood group, the Montecito Association. The Association is a staunch proponent of enforcing the Montecito Community Plan and maintaining Montecito’s signature semi-rural character.
The Community Plan, adopted in 1992, is designed to help preserve riparian habitat, ecosystems located along or near river banks, that stretch along Montecito’s various creeks.
Bagdasarian installed a lawn that removed an estimated 1.1 acres of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat according to county reports. It eliminated six Western Sycamores, 11 Coast Live Oaks, and also impacted another six oaks.
He constructed two pedestrian bridges across a Hot Springs Creek tributary along with a 300-foot nonnative species of hedge.
But in February of 2009, the county received a call that Bagdasarian had done all this work without permission from Planning and Development. After his violations had been reported to the county, he applied for the permits after the installation.
But going ahead with the construction before applying for any permits drew the ire of the Montecito Association.
When Bagdasarian went to get a permit from county Planning and Development, the department found the changes to the Hot Springs tributary in violation with the MCP and denied him the permits in July of 2010.
Bagdasarian and his wife Janice Karman filed an appeal in August and the case went to the Montecito Planning Commission. The commission ended up denying the appeal in May of 2011.
Bagdasarian then made another appeal to the board of supervisors, but requested several delays to negotiate with county planning staff to work out a plan that could reach staff approval.
The Montecito Association sent a letter urging the board of supervisors to deny the appeal, believing that enforcing the Community Plan needed to be a priority. They also complained that Bagdasarian’s maneuvers had stuck taxpayers with $32,000 worth of staff time.
Ross Bagdasarian Jr.
But the letter also said the Association would be happy to work with Bagdasarian to create a new project to alleviate some of their concerns.
After several months of haggling, in January county staff recommended that the board of supervisors should uphold the appeal provided Bagdasarian work to repair as much of the original habitat that had been lost as possible.
He agreed to perform some restoration, putting in .22 acres of oak/sycamore woodland in the southeast portion of the estate, replanting some trees, and landscaping with native plants in various areas of the property and around the creek.
Montecito Association, alarmed that the appeal might be approved without being given a chance to review the revised plan, requested a delay so their members could review the project.
On Monday, county planning representatives met with Association members to outline the details of the agreement between Bagdasarian and the county.
Though Bagdasarian representatives had been invited and Association executive director Victoria Greene said he’d had representatives at previous meetings, no one from his side showed up at the Monday meeting.
This led many to believe Bagdasarian had been playing the brash Alvin to the Association’s David Seville, rather than the naïve Theodore like he’d claimed.
Association Land Use Committee chair David Kent said that despite the Association’s overtures to Bagdasarian in September, he hadn’t responded.
“The Montecito Association hasn’t heard one word at all,” Kent said.
Association 1st vice president Robertson Short said applying for permits after the construction had taken place is inexcusable.
“It’s kind of like they’re thumbing their nose at the county,” Short said.
While the changes to the plan had made things a little better to the members, bigger violations, such as the pedestrian bridges, which Kent called “glitzy” and “just don’t fit.”
But the Association’s real fear about county approval would be other residents using Bagdasarian’s case to perform an end run around any county regulations.
“My concern is what kind of message does this send out to people in the community,” Association Land Use Committee member Martha Siegel said. “What can we do to make this message say don’t do it?”
Richard Nordlund, president of the Montecito Association, pointed out that if nothing else, Bagdasarian’s failure to secure permits for his landscaping will cost him a few extra hundred thousand dollars.
“The story you may find in the newspaper when it’s published is, ‘person violated the laws, had to restore it, and spent a lot more money,’” Nordlund said.
Victoria Greene
As it turned out, Bagdasarian did volunteer to spend some extra money.
At the board meeting Bagdasarian said he hadn’t known he needed permits to change the landscaping on his property. He offered to pay the $32,000 in addition staff time expenses that the matter had cost the county.
“When we were doing a lot of this work we were not aware of the ESH guidelines” Bagdasarian said. “Once that was brought to our attention we worked for the past three years to find some kind of compromise.”
Speaking at the meeting, Greene urged the supervisors to consider what the appeal’s approval could mean for future zoning violations.
“We feel that this project and the outcome is important in terms of the precedent that is set and the message that it sends to those people who may choose to ignore the laws that have been adopted by the county,” Greene said.
The board upheld Bagdasarian’s appeal, but the supervisors made it clear they weren’t happy with how things turned out.
First district supervisor Salud Carbajal said if the appeal had come to the board a few months earlier, he’d have voted against it. He still felt the agreement between staff and Bagdasarian wasn’t perfect but it had been better than what had been proposed before.
“Turning this down would not have necessarily led to achieve the restoration that we’ve been able to reach,” Carbajal said.
Carbajal did note that he had not received complaints from other residents.
Second district supervisor Janet Wolf said Bagdasarian’s failure to get permits concerned her, but with the bridges already in place, she thought the damage had been done.
“I don’t think it’s a win-win,” Wolf said. “I think it’s unfortunate, but it is a way to resolve it.”
Third district supervisor Doreen Farr echoed Wolf’s concerns and added that forcing Bagdasarian to remove all his landscaping arrangements would cause further harm to an ecosystem that had already been hit hard.
“I know that in these situations you can do a lot more damage trying to tear things out than you can leaving things in place,” Farr said.
Though declining to comment after his victory on Tuesday, a grinning, casual Bagdasarian, wearing a nicely creased white shirt with his sleeves half rolled up, seemed happy that the supervisors hadn’t left him Chipwrecked.
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