The Coast Isn’t Clear, Thanks to O.C. Builders
After decades of feverish construction fed by the demands of home buyers, Orange County is running out of land to build on -- and the signs are most evident along its most coveted stretch of real estate, the coast.
From San Clemente to Seal Beach, nearly every acre of the 42-mile shoreline that isn’t formally set aside for open space is developed or about to be developed.
With the Irvine Co. putting finishing touches on a 745-acre site above Crystal Cove State Park, “that’s it for ocean view in Orange County,” said Dan Nahabedian, Irvine Co.’s vice president of residential marketing.
Local officials and real estate experts confirm that virtually all of Orange County’s coast is now spoken for.
“We are definitely approaching build-out on the shore,” said Michelle Wolkoys, a real estate analyst with the consulting firm Meyers Group in Costa Mesa. “Crystal Cove is one of the last coastal properties to go for housing.”
The milestone, real estate and planning experts say, underscores the final stages of urbanization of the Southland’s second-most-populous county.
Orange County already is more crowded than Los Angeles County -- with about 3,600 residents per square mile compared to 2,300 in the larger county, according to the 2000 census. And plans are underway to develop the last remaining parcels of privately owned land in the county’s once-rural edges.
“Even though it still likes to think of itself as suburban, Orange County is an urban county,” said Gary Painter, research director at USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate.
Environmentalists decry what they say is a frenzy to approve and build homes on the last stretches of private land up and down the Southern California coast. Every new project puts added strain on such resources as clean water and increases the potential for pollution along the beaches, they point out.
“People are partying while Rome burns,” said Mark Massara, director of coastal programs for the Sierra Club.
But for others, what’s happening along the coast is the inevitable consequence of growth, and they say it presages what will happen in the rest of the county.
“Society isn’t static,” said Lucy Dunn, an Orange County real estate executive who also is vice president of the California Building Industry Assn. “If you think nothing will change, you are living a myth.”
The shrinking supply of new coastal properties is evident in home prices near the beach, which even by the standards of today’s frenzied market have reached exceptional heights.
For example, townhomes in the Irvine Co. Crystal Cove development that were first sold two years ago for $900,000 are now fetching close to $2 million, company officials say.
Construction began in 1999 on hills that overlook the Pacific Ocean and border Crystal Cove State Park to the south and the beach. Most of the homes offer breathtaking views of the sea and the picturesque Pelican Hill Golf Club to the north, where the Irvine Co. plans to build a 115-acre resort.
The company will add 310 houses to the existing 470 homes. Nahabedian said lots will go on sale this fall and should start at about $2.5 million. That’s just for the land. The entire project is expected be finished by 2011.
The Crystal Cove project is part of a master plan called Newport Coast that was approved by the state Coastal Commission four years ago. It calls for about 2,600 homes and 2,150 hotel and time-share rooms on a 9,290-acre site that includes the Pelican Hill Golf Club, the future resort and 7,340 acres of open space. About 75% of the planned work has been done.
North of Newport Beach, the saga of Bolsa Chica -- the 1,200 acres of salt marshes, pools and oil fields that have been the source of controversy for more than three decades -- is coming to a conclusion. The marshland is slated for restoration by state and federal agencies. The site, an unincorporated area of Huntington Beach, was once proposed as a marina with hotels and thousands of homes. It was dramatically scaled back by planning authorities and repeated court challenges by environmentalists and local activists.
Now, developer Hearthside Homes is planning to build 395 homes on a 100-acre mesa overlooking the marshes, said Dunn, an executive vice president with Hearthside. The company has already built 16 homes, but Huntington Beach and the state have said they might buy the remaining land to preserve it along with the marshes.
In Seal Beach, John Laing Homes is nearing completion of 64 homes on its 196-acre site formerly known as Hellman Ranch. The project, Heron Pointe, is in the coastal zone despite having no ocean views. The project was halted and scaled back because workers found Native American remains on the site.
In south Orange County, the state Coastal Commission recently approved the Dana Point Headlands project, which will put 125 homes, a small hotel and 40,000 square feet of commercial space on one of Southern California’s last undeveloped promontories. The 121-acre site also will include 60 acres of public parks.
Not all private open land along the shore is about to be developed. A few miles north of Crystal Cove is the 412-acre Banning Ranch, one of the few undeveloped sites not preserved as open space. In early 2000, developer Taylor Woodrow Homes unveiled a project with 1,750 homes and retail, commercial and industrial uses, but met with local opposition and withdrew it. The land’s fate is uncertain.
More typical is the story of San Clemente, the once sleepy coastal town on the south edge of the county, which is reviewing plans for Marblehead, a 250-acre project with more than 300 homes and 675,000 square feet of commercial space that the Coastal Commission approved last year after a decade of debate and compromises.
“It is the last of our land on the coastline,” said George Buell, a San Clemente city planner who has lived in Orange County all his life.
“San Clemente used to be the little place you stopped at on the way to San Diego ... where you grabbed a bite or used the bathroom before making it across Camp Pendleton. It certainly isn’t just that anymore.”
