Lynne Plambeck thinks of bulldozers whenever she hears Lennar Corp.'s name.
Two years ago, when the home builder was developing Stevenson Ranch just west of Santa Clarita, it planned to chop down 36 century-old oak trees. Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, or SCOPE, sought a temporary restraining order to save the oaks.
Lennar moved faster. As Plambeck and her lawyers waited for a judge to convene a hearing in the case, she recalled, bulldozers finished knocking down 27 of the trees to clear a path for a road, saving nine to replant elsewhere on the ranch.
"Our hearts just sank," Plambeck said. "We walked out of court so shocked that they would do that."
The bulldozing wasn't illegal, because a restraining order hadn't been issued. But according to Plambeck, what Lannar did was unprincipled, and not surprising for the Miami-based home builder.
Now that Lennar has agreed to buy the company that is developing the controversial Newhall Ranch project, Plambeck warns that the whole state "is in for more trouble."
Lennar officials said they couldn't comment on the Stevenson Ranch oak-tree controversy because of continuing litigation; SCOPE has challenged in court an environmental report from Lennar on one phase of the project.
But Jon Jaffe, a vice president in Lennar's Mission Viejo office, said the criticism from Plambeck -- and from environmentalists and growth opponents who regarded Lennar as an insensitive outsider -- was off the mark.
"We pride ourselves on quality, and sensitivity and being part of the communities we serve," Jaffe said. "We have a job to do, yes, but are not this huge, nameless firm that cares less about an area because we're not headquartered there. We have a vested interest in doing things right."
In less than a decade, Lennar has gobbled up a dozen smaller companies, including two of Southern California's largest builders, to overtake Los Angeles-based KB Home as the state's biggest home builder. If it acquires Valencia-based Newhall Land & Farming Co., Lennar will gain control of Newhall Ranch, a prime plot of 47,000 acres in land-constrained California.
Lennar and its partner, LNR Property Corp. of Miami, agreed this week to pay $990 million for 120-year-old Newhall. The 12,000-acre Newhall Ranch development, the largest single housing development approved by Los Angeles County, has been targeted by environmental groups as an example of unbridled growth in the northwest corner of the county.
