Residents Near Airport Make Last-Ditch Attempt to Defeat Expansion Proposal

They arrived with balloons and placards, some of them with toddlers in their arms, alighting from an Orange Blossom Lines chartered bus Tuesday afternoon in an 11th-hour attempt to save what remains of their neighborhoods below the flight path of jets from John Wayne Airport.

The bus itself was festive--papered with messages like “Thwart the ThruWay” and “Stop the Super Highway”--but the mood inside the Orange County Planning Commission’s hearing chambers was decidedly serious as a growing array of charts, maps, acoustical graphs and environmental reports began to spell the demise of large portions of residential Santa Ana Heights.

294 Homes Affected

More than 150 residents filed in to take part in the commission’s hearing on a proposal to convert an area including 294 homes in the heart of the community to office parks, allowing for expansion of the airport nearby.

After another hearing next Tuesday, the Planning Commission will make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors concerning both the proposed airport expansion and the related airport “compatibility program” for Santa Ana Heights. The supervisors are scheduled to act on both matters on Jan. 30.

Many of those at Tuesday’s hearing, weary of doing battle with the overflying jets, welcomed the proposal as a chance to sell their property to commercial developers and move on to quieter neighborhoods.

But the majority of them came prepared to fight the conversion plan, which would force some of them from homes they have lived in for 20 years or longer, and a related proposal to extend a major thoroughfare alongside many of the homes that would be retained under the plan.

“What the staff is proposing to do is totally wipe out a community,” said Cisca Stellhorn, president of the Back Bay Homeowners Assn.

Barbara Rohr presented the commission with petitions containing 250 signatures of people opposed to a proposal to extend University Drive through portions of the community that would not be displaced by the airport. She said the signatures had been collected in a single day.

“These are people that are not against progress but are for preservation of their property values and their life styles,” she said.

Noise Standards Cited

County officials say it may be necessary to replace many of the homes in Santa Ana Heights with office buildings in order to comply with state noise standards if the airport is allowed to increase its number of daily passenger-jet takeoffs to 73 from the current 41, as proposed under the master plan.

Actually, the county staff’s recommendation proposes to allow a number of homes within the area most subject to jet noise to remain, offering free noise insulation for those homes and a purchase assurance program for homeowners who do not wish to remain.

Actual conversion to office buildings is proposed only for an area of large, rural lots within the interior of the community that is the most run down and where there is the most natural pressure to convert homes to offices, said Rich Adler, project manager for the county.

But residents at Tuesday’s hearing complained that it is the county’s fault if the area has not been well-maintained. The equivalent of a building moratorium on residential development, including a ban on substantial improvements to existing homes, was in effect for several years and prevented homeowners from improving their properties, several said.

“In the past eight years I have seen people want to improve their property, and they couldn’t get a permit,” said resident Sue Cathcart.

“Now we’re being told that we don’t live up to the standards of Pegasus (a tract that, under the proposal, would be allowed to remain),” she said, “because of (their) having Mediterranean decor and five bedrooms. A lot of us would have had five bedrooms if you would have allowed us to build, but you wouldn’t.”

Noise Insulation Plan

Barbara Lichman, executive director of the Airport Working Group (a coalition of 20 homeowner associations in Newport Beach) said it is unfair to ask homeowners to sign away their rights to sue the airport in exchange for free noise insulation--something that she said would cost the county about $8,000 per home.

“I would say it would be much to the advantage of these homeowners to spend the $8,000 themselves to treat their homes and keep their rights where they belong,” said Lichman, predicting an endless series of lawsuits over the expansion plan. “Why would any of you recommend a plan that is doomed to this kind of continued acrimony?”

Yet a number of Santa Ana Heights residents spoke out in favor of the plan.

A number of homeowners in the Pegasus and Anniversary tracts applauded the plan to retain those tracts but continued to express fears over a separate plan to extend University Drive through the area.

And an association of landowners in the area proposed for conversion to office parks, ABCOM (an acronym for the major streets in that area, Acacia, Birch, Cypress, Orchard and Mesa), welcomed the plan as a resolution to years of indecision over Santa Ana Heights.

“We are not advocates of expansion of the airport. But we consider ourselves realists in that we know the airport is here,” said ABCOM spokesman Dan DeMille. “Many people would like to move but are unable to market their property. . . . We need out from under the burden of not knowing what we can do with our property.”

Gerald Odegaard is one of those whose homes would be retained under the plan, but he welcomed the purchase assurance program offered for those who do not wish to remain.

“The lifeblood of Santa Ana Heights is gone, as far as I’m concerned, if there is not a decrease below 41 flights,” said Odegaard, who has moved out of his home, although he cannot sell it, and is paying $2,000 a month for his other home.

“Those other people might not have the financial means to do that,” he said. “They’re prisoners in their own homes.”