Landmark Cook’s Corner May Have to Yield to Road Project

Cook’s Corner, a bar and grill that is a longtime Orange County landmark at the entrance to Trabuco Canyon, may have to be torn down to allow realignment of a road, planners said Tuesday.

“I hate to predict anything at this point,” said Ken R. Smith, a county transportation planner. The study on realigning Live Oak Canyon Road has not begun, but when completed it will contain alternatives that will call for removal of the bar and grill, Smith said.

The fate of Cook’s Corner came up Tuesday when the Orange County Planning Commission approved development of a shopping center at the southeast corner of the intersection of Live Oak Canyon, Santiago Canyon and El Toro roads in the north El Toro area--the entrance to Trabuco Canyon and O’Neill Regional Park.

The bar and grill is on the northeast corner of the intersection, which now is Y-shaped. For traffic safety reasons, planners have suggested rerouting Live Oak Canyon Road to meet the other two roads in a T-shaped intersection.

Smith and other county planners said it was possible that if the final study agrees with preliminary suggestions, the bar would have to be removed to provide land needed for realigning the road.

The Planning Commission did not deal with the road realignment, but it did recommend that the Board of Supervisors consider allowing commercial zoning of property on both the northeast and southeast corners of the intersection.

If the board upholds its 6-year-old policy of allowing only one commercial development at the intersection, it should pick the one on the southeast, to be developed by Live Oak Canyon Ltd., the commission said.

Last month, the supervisors decided to allow commercial development on only one corner of the intersection, saying that allowing more would mar the rural character of the area.

But the supervisors sent the issue back to the Planning Commission to determine if the Cook’s Corner site could support commercial zoning and which property owner should be chosen for the development. The commission on Tuesday said that the Cook’s Corner site could support commercial zoning but picked Live Oak Canyon Ltd.’s property as the preferred site.

The plot that contains Cook’s Corner is owned by the Morales family, whose members did not attend the Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors hearings and who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The family has had its property zoned for commercial use for several years but has not developed it. The Board of Supervisors could change the zoning and strip it of its commercial designation. The supervisors also could allow a limited commercial use, such as a new restaurant on the property, if the owners wanted that.

Live Oak Canyon Ltd. said that it plans to build a 54,200-square-foot neighborhood shopping center that will include a gas station, a farmers’ market and other shops. The first phase will have several stores in one building, with other stores and two more buildings to be constructed later.

Dean Brown, a representative of the developer, said permission may be sought later to build homes on the property as well. The shopping center will take up only 8.5 acres of the 23-acre site.

The Morales family property is vacant now except for the bar and grill. The Live Oak Canyon Ltd. property is also vacant.