Residents Get Ready to Battle County Plan

Children astride ponies skittered to one side of the circular driveway to let one more Cadillac enter and drop off yet another influential guest at Sunday’s open house at the sprawling Santa Ana Heights estate of influential Republican businessman Buck Johns.

With the colored balloons, white folding chairs and more than 100 circulating guests holding sodas or beers, it had all the relaxed atmosphere of a garden party in sunny Southern California.

But this hastily arranged meeting was actually a circling of the wagons by Santa Ana Heights residents to battle redevelopment plans and a proposed extension of a regional highway through the semirural cluster of estates, horse farms, dog kennels and deteriorating tract homes in unincorporated county territory south of John Wayne Airport.

Political Contacts

And because of Johns’ considerable political contacts resulting from his association with an influential GOP fund-raising group, the Lincoln Club, the open house also provided residents who have fought the county for years with a chance to discuss their concerns in person with guests such as Supervisor Thomas Riley, state Sens. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and Ed Royce (R-Anaheim) and presidential speech writer Ken Kashigian, among others.

Both the controversial land-use plan, which calls for converting 294 homes in the heart of Santa Ana Heights to business parks and adding noise insulation to hundreds more homes lying in the airport’s flight path, and the extension of University Drive along the Upper Newport Back Bay will come before the county Planning Commission Tuesday afternoon.

It is all part of a comprehensive planning package for the area that will be considered by the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 30, along with a master plan for expansion of John Wayne Airport.

Record Numbers Predicted

Whether residents oppose one or the other, or both, they made plans Sunday to turn out for the commission meeting armed with placards in what Johns predicted would be record numbers.

“We’re fighting for our lives,” said Johns, whose nearly four-acre estate overlooking the back bay would be covered with asphalt--along with a dozen other estates--under two of four possible routes for the highway extension.

A regional highway through the bucolic enclave, where chickens and ducks now waddle across the roads at will and horses traverse a myriad of equestrian paths into the back bay, “would wreck the area,” contended Johns, a 43-year-old developer of apartment and commercial property.

Supervisor Riley, whose district includes the 600-acre community of 2,500 people, said he was unaware of any active plans to extend the highway. County Project Manager Rich Adler said last week that a decision would likely be deferred to allow study by adjacent cities.

But residents like Johns contend it is a proposal that refuses to die and that now is the time to remove the University Drive extension from the county’s general plan. “We’ve got to go down and terrorize the Planning Commission--that’s the next step,” Johns told one resident.

Ciska Stellhorn, a longtime Santa Ana Heights resident and president of the Back Bay Homeowners Assn., said Johns’ interest has given a much-needed impetus to their fight against encroaching development and airport expansion in the area.

The latest recommendation by county planners is scaled down considerably from the more than 1,000 residences targeted for conversion to office and commercial use a year ago. But many residents still oppose the modified plan because it marks equestrian residential properties like Stellhorn’s for extinction.

High-Density Development

The plan would preserve estates like Johns’ along Mesa Drive, as well as apartments and single-family homes on the community’s fringe. It would allow some high-density development of apartments and condominiums bordering the business parks, increasing the total number of homes in the area.

Noise insulation would be installed free of charge in the 348 residences that would be subject to the greatest increase in jet noise if airport use is expanded from the current 41 jet flights a day to 73 flights under the pending airport master plan.

But for the 90 acres proposed for conversion to business parks, the plan does not spell out whether the county would acquire all the homes for immediate redevelopment or let the conversion occur gradually under real estate market forces.

That, according to several Santa Ana Heights residents, will only undermine their property values on the open market.

“This is so stupid,” fumed longtime resident Jack Mullan. “The only people that will benefit by it are people with tear-down properties. If you can’t sell your property on the open market, what are you going to be able to sell it for? And if we have a threat of a major arterial road going through here on top of everything, the property has no market value at all.”

“We want to coexist with the airport,” Stellhorn said. “What bothers me is that of all the input the county has had from the people living here, none of it was included. It just doesn’t matter to the county what we think.

‘We Don’t Have Clout’

“Politically, we don’t have any clout. We’re just homeowners they expect to make a certain level of protest . . . . Then they ignore it.”

Referring to the board members, she said, “I can’t drop $10,000 or $5,000 into their political campaigns.”

Which was why Stellhorn and others said they welcomed Johns’ interest and the political clout it could give their group with the Board of Supervisors.

“Look at the people who are here,” said one resident who asked not to be identified. “I mean, who else could get people like Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) and (state) Sen. Ed Royce out here?”

None of the legislators in attendance nor those represented by aides can actually cast a vote on land use in the county strip, Johns acknowledged. But as opinion makers, they carry considerable weight with those who do: the supervisors.

“We need to use our collective strength and present a united voice, not just mine,” said Johns. “We need to tell them (planning commissioners) ‘Wait a minute, we’re not in agreement with what the county has proposed.’ And you bet we plan to follow that up with the Board (of Supervisors).”

Noting that the group of more than 100 Santa Ana Heights residents circulating at the open house was organized in less than a week, Johns said: “I just hope the Board of Supervisors gets the hint that people here are nervous about this.”