WEEKEND TREK—Jim Friedl, center, general manager of Conejo Recreation and Park District, leads community members on a walking tour of the Lang Ranch Park property on Saturday morning. An estimated 70 residents took part in the tour of the 124-acre park property, which is bordered by Westlake Boulevard, Avenida de Los Arboles and Erbes Road. KATHIE HARRISON/Special to the Acorn The park district won’t be alone in deciding what’s next for Lang Ranch Community Park.

More than 100 people filled a meeting room last week at Conejo Recreation and Park District’s Hillcrest Drive headquarters to discuss how to develop the 124- acre property now that CRPD has learned it cannot be graded.

Sitting at tables with a park district employee documenting their recommendations, residents shared their ideas. Suggestions included a handball court, a rock climbing wall and lawn bowling, but heard most often were wishes for restrooms, hiking trails and amenities for mountain bikers.

Newbury Park resident and mountain bike coach Mark Langton said a park with a skills-building track and a pump track would take pressure off local hiking trails. A skills-building bike track is a dirt track with challenging features such as tight switchbacks, rock chutes, a ladder or suspension bridge. A pump track is a loop that contains rolling mounds and banked curves that allow riders to gain momentum by pumping their body back and forth rather than pedaling.

“You have a lot of people who want to do BMX-style riding or more aggressive riding on the trails, and those trails aren’t really designed for that,” said Langton, a member of Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association and the trails advisory group for the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency.

“There are a lot of people who want to do things like jumping and things that have to do with riding more technical trails, something that’s a little bit more rough,” he said.

The Feb. 8 meeting was the first of four public events planned by the park district to gather input and formulate a recommendation to the CRPD board of directors.

Last month, the board was forced to scrap a 10- year, $2.5-million effort to build a fullservice park at the site after a geotechnical study revealed that up to $15 million would be needed to bring the hillside property up to stability safety standards.

Plans for the site, which is bordered by Erbes Road, Westlake Boulevard and Avenida de Los Arboles, had included a community center, five baseball diamonds and other amenities that are no longer options.

The second event was a 90-minute walk of the property led by CRPD General Manager Jim Friedl early on Feb. 11.

A third public meeting to collect more recommendations is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wed., Feb. 29, and a final meeting to organize the recommendations is planned for 7 p.m. Wed., March 21. Both meetings will be at the Hillcrest Center Community Room, 403 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks.

Friedl said the district is limited as to what it can do with the property. There can be no grading on the hillside, which takes up 95 percent of the land. That means the district can’t build structures or roads on the slope.

“With the grading limitations, that’s what you’re primarily going to see—trails,” he said, adding that most people asked for separate trails for hikers, equestrians and mountain bikers.

Friedl said he expects to present all recommendations from the public to the board in April. The board has the ultimate say over what will happen at the site.

Ideas, ideas

Westlake Village resident Ron Hughes said he’d like to see mountain bike features in the park.

“We have a lot of ballfields and things like that, but we don’t have anything for bicycles. Every kid has a bike.”

Hughes said he and his two teenage sons travel long distances to find a challenging mountain bike track because the only facility in town is the skate park at Borchard Community Park, where mountain bikers can practice.

Hughes and others also suggested CRPD leave as much of the park property as possible in a natural state. Considering the limitations of the property, that’s almost inevitable.

“My kids wanted me to buy this field, just a vacant lot, where they could shoot paint ball guns, fly remote-control planes and stuff like that; kids just don’t get that anymore,” Hughes said. “To them it’s the most fun around—just an empty field.”

Sitting at another table, firstgrade teacher Diane Evans said she’d enjoy simply strolling in the park or picnicking by a creek.

Evans, who lives across the street from the property, was glad to see the district drop its initial plans, which she said would have led to more traffic congestion on Avenida de Los Arboles and parking problems on residential streets.

“What they were planning was too invasive,” she said.