Planning Panel Supports Change in Rule Requiring Parklands of Developers

The Orange County Planning Commission on Tuesday recommended that housing developers have the option of providing public parkland or creating private parks that the county could take over in the future.

The proposal would modify action by the Board of Supervisors last February that requires developers to provide parks but allows them to be off-limits to the public.

In supporting Tuesday’s action, a South Laguna community group argued that “gated communities do indeed provide recreation for their inhabitants, but they (the inhabitants) are also free to use public parks, whereas the opposite is not true.”

Developers had lobbied heavily last year to persuade the supervisors to let home builders provide only private parks, and a representative of the Mission Viejo Co., David Celestin, argued against the new requirement.

Celestin cited Mission Viejo Co.’s development of the Costa del Sol community for older residents, who, he said, “would not appreciate their gates being open to the children to come in there” and use the community’s park.

But Virginia Chester of the Sea and Sage Audubon Society urged the commission to make sure that the county retained the option of taking over the parks, saying that “this is an opportunity we have to preserve the land for future generations.”

Chester said that decades from now, in a time of economic problems, homeowners desperate for money could wind up selling their private parks in gated communities to raise funds.

Under the new requirement, developers could simply provide public parks or could create private parks that the county could take over some day. A developer who refused to allow such a takeover would have to provide half again as much land for a public park or pay fees--which could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The commission said the county would be required to pay its fair share to maintain access roads to the parks and to hold public meetings to hear objections from homeowners’ associations threatened with having their private parks opened to the public.

Several commissioners said they did not believe the county would ever wind up taking over private parks, especially since the county is having trouble providing funds to maintain the parks it now operates.

But Commissioner C. Douglas Leavenworth said Tuesday’s action was “an insurance policy that we can afford” in case the county someday finds it needsmore recreation space for its residents.

An Environmental Management Agency report noted that the county’s requirement that developers provide land for public parks--currently 2 1/2 acres per 1,000 residents in a development--was instituted “when intense development in unincorporated areas was beginning. . . .”

“The concept is one of trusteeship; that the county will provide for the recreation needs of its residents, both current and future,” the report said.

The commission’s recommendations now go to the Board of Supervisors for review.