The Manor Scorned : Neighbors Fight Estate Owner’s Effort to Give It Away as Museum

MONTECITO, Calif. — Madonna once offered to buy his estate for $22 million, but Dr. Warren Austin would have none of it. No sir.

He had other plans for his historic property: He was going to give it away.

Little did he realize how hard that would be.

For three years now, Austin has been fighting for county permission to deed his elegant home and graceful gardens to a nonprofit foundation that would open them to the public. He has the project all worked out, from the free garden tours to the $4-million endowment he will put up for maintenance.

But before he can give away his wealth, Austin needs a conditional use permit from the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission.

And his neighbors are determined to see he doesn’t get it.

This posh community of 9,000 just east of Santa Barbara is decidedly unimpressed with Austin’s gift. There are plenty of old houses here. Lots of old money too. And few neighbors see the need for a museum in their midst.

Montecito is, after all, a community dedicated to privacy--from the tree-shrouded driveways to the service gates for delivery workers. Austin’s critics believe that converting a private house into a museum would slam the sedate rural ambience they cherish with an unwelcome jolt of clunky commercialism.

As one fired-up resident wrote the local paper: “This ‘gift horse’ needs to be more carefully examined.”

The property that has Montecito in a tizzy--a 17-acre parcel dubbed Val Verde--is recognized as a historic landmark on county, state and federal registers.

The clean, spare lines of the 1915 home show off one of the first modernist designs conceived by renowned architect Bertram Goodhue, who designed downtown Los Angeles’ original Central Library a decade later. Equally prized are the quirky gardens, which tumble from formal terraces to tangled woodland, from elegant pool to flirtatious creek, all representing the vision of landscape designer Lockwood de Forest.

For more than a century, guests have visited the property to marvel and to learn.

Austin, 85, wants to make sure that tradition continues for as long as Val Verde stands. So he has established a foundation to turn the grounds into a free public museum. The main house would be open to visitors after his death, assuming the home could be brought up to public safety codes.

“When you’ve got something this wonderful,” Austin said, “you have to show it to the world.”

That attitude is precisely what alarms Austin’s neighbors.

Although Austin has promised to allow only 3,340 visitors a year into a future Val Verde museum, his neighbors fear that traffic will overwhelm their community, which already is the site of a public botanical garden and a small liberal arts college.

They argue as well that Val Verde’s driveway perches on a dangerous curve of Sycamore Canyon Road--too dangerous to accommodate a rush of tourists. (The California Department of Transportation’s latest, fiercely contested survey indicates that the road does not pose a safety hazard.)

“Even if it were a very nice property, it’s in the wrong spot,” said Donald Iselin, a 10-year Montecito resident who has been leading the opposition. “You don’t put a toilet in the middle of the living room.”

Iselin quickly adds that he does not consider Val Verde a dump. But other neighbors sniff that the property is really not all that special.

The weathered sandstone patina that preservationists go nuts over looks downright dilapidated to them. As for the oak grove on the edge of the property, well, they argue that it could be uprooted to make room for another house without disrupting Val Verde’s two acres of formal gardens.

“We’re not talking about the Eighth Wonder of the World here,” one letter writer sneered. “Let’s get real. As it sits now, Val Verde is a second-rate estate.”

The feud between Austin and his neighbors has been fierce; one longtime Montecito resident describes it as the nastiest dust-up the town has seen in a decade. Meetings on the project inevitably turn contentious. And the Montecito Assn., a powerful homeowners group representing 1,200 families, has voted to oppose the project.

“We’re not in favor of turning the community into a tourist attraction,” said the group’s executive director, Bill Raymond.

In fact, the Val Verde site has been a tourist attraction for more than a century.

One of the largest grapevines on record--a monster that produced up to seven tons of grapes a year--grew along the creek that runs through the estate in the mid-19th century. Astounded landowners seeded the soil with other crops as well: bananas, olives, palm trees and tropical cuttings. As the plants sprouted, the landowners let the public come and gawk (though they posted guards to prevent produce poaching).

Even after the house was built, tourists still visited to check out the fabulous gardens. Owner after owner--including Austin, who moved in with his wife in 1956--let them ramble through the grounds.

Wandering about, visitors would stumble onto architectural treasures such as the circular “garden rooms” for outdoor contemplation, or the blue-tile relics of an ancient Tunisian harem. They also would come across oddities like the wood sign outside the pool warning, “Please call out before opening gate” (early Val Verde residents swam in the nude).

“The neighbors say we’re going to ruin the place [by opening it to the public], make it noisy and dusty,” Austin said. “Well, we’re not going to do anything we haven’t done for the past 50 years.”

Ironically, Austin says converting Val Verde into a museum may actually lower the number of guests visiting the property.

As a private homeowner, the retired physician now has complete freedom to use his gardens as he pleases: He can stage gala fund-raisers for charities, invite university students to conduct research, or set up daily tours for dozens of people. Victoria’s Secret has shot its catalog photos among the arching oaks and somber columns of Val Verde, and lately, up to 300 people a month have been visiting, according to Gail Jansen, an architectural historian who helps coordinate the tours.

But in his museum proposal, Austin--in deference to neighborhood concerns--proposes allowing just 160 tourists and 35 researchers a month. In addition, he wants permission for the foundation to hold four parties a year with up to 250 guests at each.

“This is not going to be the Rose Bowl,” promised his attorney, John Gherini. “This is not going to be Disneyland.”

Over fierce local protest, the county Planning Commission this winter granted preliminary approval to Austin’s plan. The commissioners will review their 3-2 vote at a second hearing scheduled for Wednesday. If Austin wins, his foes will undoubtedly appeal to the county Board of Supervisors.

The battle--and the prospect of more ahead--frustrates and exhausts Austin, who says he wants Val Verde protected forever as a memorial to his deceased wife, Bunny.

“Imagine fighting for three years to [get permission to] give this place to somebody,” he said. “It’s a querulous world now. Everybody’s cranky.”

If history is any guide, however, the animosity could well subside should Austin get his permit and Val Verde open as a public museum.

Just down the road from the property, managers of the Lotusland botanical gardens fought for four years and spent $500,000 to get a permit to open their lush estate to the public. Many neighbors opposed the project--but not one has complained since the gardens opened in September 1993. And Lotusland has proved such a popular draw that it is booked through next spring for its quota of 9,000 visitors a year.

Architectural historian Alexandra Cole predicts that Val Verde would be a similar success as a museum, showing a generation raised in tract homes the expansive, luxurious, graceful life of Montecito in the 1920s.

“Somehow there’s a feeling you get from visiting one of these places,” said Cole, a member of the Santa Barbara County Historical Landmarks Advisory Commission. “It’s something intangible. It expands your horizons.”

Val Verde is one of the few estates in the area that boasts an intact home and garden, undisturbed by bulldozers or construction cranes, she said. “This is the very type of building that put Montecito on the map,” Cole said. “It’s so amazing that we have this man wanting to give away his property so people can see it.”