Holland & Knight Represents Landowner and Major Developers in Landmark Agreement
The 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch faced protracted land use and environmental disputes as it sought to develop two new towns and a new mountain resort in the Tehachapi Mountains, located in Los Angeles and Kern County, connecting the Sierra Nevada and California Coastal ranges. The Ranch, which also is a critical habitat to the California Condor, has long been the most sought-after private conservation property in the state of California.
On May 8, Governor Schwarzenegger announced a landmark agreement reached by our client Tejon Ranchcorp that will protect roughly 90 percent of the Ranch while allowing timely development of these planned major development projects.
This historic pre-development accord includes The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League and the Endangered Habitats League, all of whom agreed to refrain from opposing these new development projects in exchange for the conservation of other areas of the Ranch.
Tejon Ranch also obtained federal and state agency assurances that these newly conserved lands would remain available to mitigate development project impacts. In addition, an innovative financing program was developed to create and fund in perpetuity a new Tejon Ranch Conservancy to assure the long-term successful management of the conserved lands as well as the long-term alignment of interests between the environmental organizations, the landowner and the developers.