Airport Expansion Plan Faces Formidable Foe : Property rights: Agency condemns a slice of land near north-south runway, but the owner says it’s worth more than money and vows to fight.

GLENDALE — It seemed a fairly simple decision when the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority voted unanimously in July to condemn a slice of property that abuts an airport service road.

Even though the property owner objected, airport officials reasoned that their offer of $193,972 for the 13,838-square-foot parcel on an alley at 7550 Wheatland Ave. was fair. So they authorized airport attorneys to seize the property, which is in Sun Valley on the border of the airport, and expect to take possession by the end of this month.

A service road on the west side of the airport will then be straightened and extended, giving large aircraft a parallel taxiway to the end of the busiest north-south runway. The work will cost $35,000 and take about a month to complete, airport officials said.

Without the improvement, at least 15 large aircraft daily are forced to taxi across the runway--a significant safety hazard, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But Robert R. Hensler of Glendale, who has owned the parcel since 1949, has vowed to fight. He said the property “is worth more to me than the money.”

Whoa! One property owner is challenging the powerful airport authority over its offer to pay $14 a square foot for a vacant piece of property in an industrial-residential strip on the edge of a busy airport?

Yep, that’s Hensler. But he is not just any property owner. He is used to taking on big challenges. A veteran contractor, Hensler builds major projects--flood-control reservoirs, freeways, airports, harbors and copper mines.

More than three decades ago, Hensler won a suit against the city of Los Angeles that is considered a landmark case on contract law and is commonly cited in textbooks. Hensler had been hired by Los Angeles to extend a runway at Los Angeles International Airport, but work was delayed because the city had failed to obtain proper ownership of land needed for the extension. Hensler sued for damages and won.

He also has taken on the city of Glendale in a fight over property rights versus ridgeline preservation in what could become a landmark case in the state, and possibly the nation.

Now, Hensler has retained an attorney to argue his stand against the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which he said does not really need his property. He said it is a matter of principle and he is not in the least fazed by the power of the airport agency.

In his suit against Glendale, pending before the state Supreme Court, he charges that the city unfairly condemned a 140-acre portion of his property when it approved the San Rafael Hills development--the largest and most controversial hillside project ever undertaken in the city.

After years of debate, the city in 1986 approved the 544-home San Rafael Estates development near the Glendale Freeway and Mountain Street. Hensler, who co-owned the property with another Glendale family, had proposed at one time building up to 1,800 homes. The approved plan prohibited development on 213 acres of the 316-acre site, including 140 acres of a prominent ridge in the hills that serves as a backdrop for the city.

Hensler is represented in the Glendale matter by Gideon Kanner of Los Angeles, considered one of the foremost attorneys in the country on constitutional law. Hensler said he is prepared to carry the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

Even Glendale’s legal advisers admit privately that Hensler’s argument on the development issue is formidable. It could change the way cities in California and across the nation view their power to control growth. The suit does not challenge the city’s right to preserve the ridge, but argues that the city should pay for condemned land, which in this case could cost $10 million or more, officials said.

Kanner is a specialist in issues involving eminent domain and inverse condemnation of property. Professor emeritus at Loyola University School of Law, Kanner said the Hensler issue “is only the second case in the country where a city has had the temerity, the chutzpah, to pass an ordinance that flat-out forbids a person from using his land.”

The first case involved a South Carolina developer named David Lucas who won a landmark ruling last year before the U.S. Supreme Court. Lucas vs. South Carolina Coastal Council is now considered an important precedent in issues of eminent domain and inverse condemnation, according to legal experts.

In his brief submitted to the state Supreme Court on Sept. 22, Kanner urges the court to tell “an affluent suburban community like Glendale that there is no such thing as a free lunch--that if it wants to acquire ridgeline acreage in its untouched condition for the aesthetic delectation of its inhabitants, it will just have to buy, not grab it.”

He urges the state’s highest court to “set California law back on the right track,” and complains that court rulings have developed a pattern that is “unfair and wholly insensitive to legitimate constitutional rights of property owners.”

Glendale officials are scheduled to submit their reply to the court in early December. A date has not been set for oral arguments, which are expected to be heard next year.

Shortly after he won city approval, Hensler sold his share of the San Rafael development to Homes by Polygon of Irvine, which is nearing completion on the project.

Hensler is a veteran of major undertakings. He formed a partnership to bid this year--but lost--on a $1.4-billion flood-control project under way in San Bernardino County by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“He probably knew more about the job than anybody,” said his son, John Hensler of Phoenix.

Hensler has built reservoirs for the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, including the San Gabriel Dam and Big Dalton Dam near Glendora.

Other projects by Hensler include Alamo Dam, a $7.9-million project completed in 1967 about 100 miles northwest of Phoenix. Hensler won that contract after building a 36-mile road from a town called Wendon to the reservoir site. The 500-acre lake is now a popular recreation site, according to researchers at the Phoenix Public Library.

Hensler said his last major project, completed in 1976, entailed excavation of 90 million tons of dirt from the Twin Buttes Copper Mine near Tucson. That project took a crew of 120 workers more than three years to complete.

Among his credits also are the marina at King Harbor in Redondo Beach, portions of airports including Los Angeles International, Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and at Ontario, Palm Springs and Palmdale. He worked on the Glendale Freeway and the Grapevine between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. The 120-lot Oakridge Estates in the Verdugo Woodlands was his doing.

Typically, Hensler purchases giant construction equipment for a specific project, then liquidates the machinery when the work is done.

Throughout his career, Hensler has masterminded his projects from his little construction office next to Burbank Airport where he still reports to work every day.

The office is an easy commute from the seven-bedroom house he built in Glendale, where he raised his five sons and two daughters. He now has nine grandchildren.

A septuagenarian who does not like to give his age, Hensler was born in Hollywood and has lived in Glendale since 1947. He is described by one associate as “a very principled, old-fashioned kind of guy.”

Hensler said the Burbank Airport several years ago tried to condemn his 61,000-square-foot lot where he operates his business. He fought that by successfully arguing in court in 1989 that airport officials had failed to properly conduct an environmental impact study of the proposal.

Now, Hensler said he is opposed to giving up even a small slice of his land.

“It means more to me than the money,” he repeated.