Homes Could Replace LA’s Last Commercial Orange Grove

A plan by Borstein Enterprises to replace the last commercial orange grove in the San Fernando Valley with 21 single-family homes may soon be a done deal.

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission will consider plans by the Sawtelle-based builder to redevelop two-thirds of the 14-acre Bothwell Ranch for high-end homes at 5300 North Oakdale Avenue in Woodland Hills, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. The hearing is slated for Aug. 21.

A yearslong effort to save the historic grove south of Ventura Boulevard near Tarzana was in 2022 replaced by a plan by Councilman Bob Blumenfield to preserve 4.6 acres.

Plans by Borstein call for building 21 luxury homes on the remaining 9 acres, styled after Valley farmhouses and Spanish estates, with state-of-the-art sustainable features. Some 328 new trees would divide the two-story homes.

The homes would range from 4,800 square feet to 5,100 square feet, with most containing accessory dwelling units, or granny flats.

The developer would preserve 308 existing orange trees in two rows along Oakdale Avenue as a tribute to the former Bothwell grove.

Borstein would also donate more than 4 acres, or 30 percent of the orchard, to be preserved by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

About 1,100 of the ranch’s 1,451 citrus trees would be fed to the wood chipper. The orchard stretches back nearly 100 years, while most of the trees were replaced about four decades ago.

“Most of the trees were at the edge of their normal lifespan,” land consultant Brad Rosenheim of Rosenheim & Associates, who works with Borstein, told the Daily News. “Whether we take them out or they were taken out by old age, it was happening or going to happen very soon.”

What was originally a 140-acre orchard was bought in 1926 by Lindley Bothwell, a rancher, vintage car collector, surfer and USC cheerleading coach who pioneered its sports stadium moving card stunt cheer when the Valley was blanketed in citrus. He died in 1986.

His wife, Helen Ann Bothwell, managed the property until she died in 2016.

The Bothwell heirs listed the property in 2019, sparking an outcry from neighbors and government officials who grappled to preserve the historic orchard in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The family valued the property then at $15 million. Borstein bought it for an undisclosed price.

Blumenfield moved to protect the grove and initiated a bid to designate its trees a city historic cultural monument. But he withdrew his support after the heirs threatened to starve the Valencia and navel oranges of water and after he discovered the existing trees weren’t so historic.

“It is also important to note that if we hadn’t made this agreement and moved forward with the plan to preserve 4 acres of the site, all the trees would have been likely lost,” Jake Flynn, a spokesman for Blumenfield, told the Daily News in an email.

Nonetheless, some residents believe the Bothwell Ranch should be preserved, its rows of trees considered a welcome coolant to the Valley’s sizzling summer heat.

“It’s outrageous,” Jeff Bornstein, of Woodland Hills, president of the West Valley Alliance for Optimal Living, said of plans for an orange crush. “It’s what Los Angeles city policies are all about. It’s money over what’s right.”

— Dana Bartholomew