Tejon Mountain Village is a proposed residential, commercial, and recreational development of pristine, rugged property in the Tehachapi Mountains owned by the Tejon Ranch Company in Lebec, southern Kern County, California. The development includes the largest conservation and land-use agreement in California history. It was approved by the county's Board of Supervisors in October 2009. Opponents launched a legal challenge that was denied in state district court in April 2012.
The pact between the Tejon Ranch Company and a coalition of environmental groups, announced in May 2008, is designed to permanently protect of the ranch, including a vast amount outside the borders of the Tejon Mountain Village subdivision.
Planned development
Now approved by Kern County, but a matter of debate for years in the Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass, the development would include homes, commercial buildings, hotels, and golf courses.
Tejon Mountain Village would be a gated community amid 26,417 acres
of Tejon Ranch property. It would include two golf courses, 3,450 homes, a -shopping center near Interstate 5, two heliports, and a maximum of 750 hotel rooms. Houses and apartments would be grouped in small enclaves around the lake and on the level tops of surrounding ridges. Larger lot custom homes would rise from the more remote hilltops in the northwest and northeast sections of the development area. Buildings would be designed to fit into the existing land rather than the land being molded to fit the buildings.
Residential lots would range in size from to more than . There would be two heliports, two 18-hole golf courses, and about of support space for the "commercial amenities."
The property will be developed by a new entity, Tejon Mountain Village LLC. Originally a joint enterprise with DMB Associates of Scottsdale, Arizona, the Tejon Ranch Company bought out its partner in July 2014.
Lawsuits
A coalition of environmentalists, Native Americans and local residents, including the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit in Kern County Superior Court on November 12, 2009, to halt the development. The suit claimed the construction would threaten the California condor and negatively affect sacred Chumash sites, degrade air quality, and add traffic to nearby Interstate 5. On November 5, 2010, Kern County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman ruled in favor of Kern County, Tejon Mountain Village and its development partner, DMB Associates. The Center for Biological Diversity appealed the ruling to California's Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno on February 9, 2011. It was joined by the TriCounty Watchdogs, the Wishtoyo Foundation (a Chumash-oriented group interested in the environment), and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.
In April 2012, Fifth District Court determined that the project could move forward. The court felt that the flaws it saw in the environmental impact report were too minor to stop the development.
Federal Judge Cormac J. Carney in December 2020 rejected a suit by opponents alleging that the development proposal should have recognized the California condor as a "traditional cultural property" deserving special protection.
The Tejon Ranch Conservancy that same year filed a suit alleging that the Tejon Ranch Company had stopped making the agreed payments; the company countersued.
Conditions
In return for the county's granting a 30-year permit to complete the development instead of the standard 10 years, the developers agreed to fund six community endeavors:
$500,000 for an expanded Frazier Mountain Park Community Center, which money would come from a fee of $1,000 on the first 500 residential units sold in the project. $25,000 to the local Fire-Safe Council to assist property owners in the Mountain Communities with fire-education efforts and preparation of a wildfire plan. $7 yearly from each residence to support tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations serving residents and to implement energy-efficiency programs in the Mountain Communities. $70 per parcel per year for paramedic services. Dedication of a public multi-use trail along the western boundary of Castac Lake. Funding of 1.5 years of a deputy sheriff's position (to be effective six months after the first building permit is issued).
Concerns
Environment
Principal objections in the county approval process concerned the effects on wildlife, lack of sufficient water, glare from lights, air pollution, and damage to the existing community.