Brea’s Development Plan Stirs Emotions in Peaceful Canyon

Nestled among pine, silver maple and liquid amber trees, Claire Schlotterbeck’s ranch-style home in Brea’s Carbon Canyon allows her family “to get out of the pressure cooker of all life.”

Like other families in a 1,767-acre area proposed for development, the Schlotterbecks and their two children enjoy the shadowy stillness of the hillside.

“There’s no noise. We hear the birds,” Schlotterbeck said, sitting in a wooden swing on her porch. “It’s nice to come up the canyon and see nothing but hillside. It’s dark out here. We can see the stars every night. You can’t do that in Brea.”

Schlotterbeck, like other residents, said she is concerned that proposed development of the area will “destroy the hillside” and their way of life.

Final Hearing Tonight

Tonight, Brea City Council members are scheduled to hold the last public hearing before their final decision on how much development to allow in the canyon. During a meeting Saturday with residents, the council members asked their staff to draw a plan that would permit a maximum of 2,521 homes. The canyon now has 303 homes, including a mobile home park.

The 2,521 figure is a compromise between city officials and residents. The Planning Commission had recommended as many as 4,371 units. But even two commission members voted against that plan, citing their concern for the potential of landslides, fires and congestion on the main thoroughfare, Carbon Canyon Road.

Planning Commissioner Carl Clausen, who voted for the plan, nevertheless calls it a giant “jigsaw puzzle” with the potential to create a small town in itself. If 4,371 homes were allowed, Brea’s population of 33,000 would increase by about a third.

That would lead to several problems, residents say, including provision of adequate fire and police protection.

“Any more construction would need a fire station,” agreed William Kelly, Brea development services director. Olinda Village already has a one-person station and another is under construction. But development in the canyon would call for a fire station, additional police, a new school and more city maintenance personnel and equipment, Kelly said.

City officials haven’t estimated those costs except for the fire station, which they set at $1 million for construction and a fire truck. The figure does not include salaries.

Both residents and city officials agree that costs for physical changes such as new roads will be passed on to developers.

“All future development will pay its own way,” Kelly said.

One developer already has expressed an interest in building on his portion of Carbon Canyon.

City Council members have tentatively agreed to allow high-density construction on 38 of the 100 acres owned by Walden Williams of Huntington Beach. But because of residents’ complaints, the council reduced the density from a maximum of 30 units per acre to 20 units per acre, Kelly said. Current plans call for the remaining acres to be developed with one unit per five acres, he said.

Schlotterbeck said city officials should give the high-density area another look. Calling it a 14-year-old “mistake” that “this council is being asked to deal with,” Schlotterbeck said multiple-family zoning, first approved in 1971, still packs too many homes on the hills.

Because of the existence of fault zones, the potential for landslides, and slopes that are too steep for development, the plan calls for most of the new homes to built on top of the ridges and not the side slopes, Kelly said.

Schlotterbeck, who is a Brea Parks, Recreation and Human Services Commission member, said that regardless of precautions, the area is not suited for high density.

‘Home Is an Escape’

“A lot of the homes have cracks because they were built 20 years ago. We can live with a crack in our floor. But what happens when you have a crack because of unstable land in a home that is attached to a lot of other units?” Schlotterbeck asked. “It’s a problem we have lived with and we don’t want others to live with them.”

Residents also worry that new homes on top of the hills will ruin the area’s rural flavor. “Most of us moved out here primarily because it’s a rural area,” said Susan Alspach, president of the 134-member Hollydale Mobile Home Estates Homeowners Assn.

“Most of us are from the Midwest, and we just couldn’t take the metropolitan area. Home is an escape. I come home every night and the closer I get, the more I smile,” Alspach said.

To the residents of Hollydale and the 169 homes in Olinda Village, new development means driving away the area’s raccoons, coyotes and other wildlife. It also translates to heavy traffic, they said.

Plans to widen Lambert Road, which becomes Carbon Canyon Road, are “on the drawing board now,” Kelly said. Another plan, however, to build Soquel Canyon Road at a cost of $55 million, would be passed on to developers if the road is built at all.

Because Carbon Canyon lies along the junction of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, residents worry that the world will encroach.

“We’re not anti-development,” Alspach said. “It’s peaceful here. We want to keep it that way.”