County Rejects Santa Ana Heights Stables

Despite pleas from horse lovers and complaints of betrayal, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday that the county cannot provide public stables in Santa Ana Heights.

The unincorporated area near John Wayne Airport is one of the few communities in Orange County where zoning allows residents to keep horses, with the number depending on the size of the property.

Martha Durkee, a horse owner who urged the supervisors to keep a past promise of providing an equestrian center, said horse trails stretch from the neighborhood to Laguna Beach and across to the Cleveland National Forest.

“We had hoped” for an equestrian center, Durkee said after the supervisors’ vote. “We had faith. . . . We trusted the county.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes the heights, noted that property on Mesa Drive, which the county once considered for stables, had been bought by a man opposed to having a stable there.

A report by the county Environmental Management Agency said “at least several acres” would be required for a center and “would likely involve over $1 million in up-front land acquisition costs.”

In addition, the report said neighbors near any site might object to a horse stable.

County Planning Director Robert Fisher said staff members worked hard to find a site for an equestrian center after the stables south of Corona del Mar closed three years ago, leaving people with nowhere to put their horses.

“We gave it our best shot,” Fisher said. But potential opposition, high land costs and lack of large tracts meant that building an equestrian center “just doesn’t seem to be practical. We’re sorry we had to come to that conclusion, but that’s the way it turned out.”

Durkee said that more than 300 people wanted an equestrian center and that only four or five area residents opposed it. She said there are more than 200 horses in the Santa Ana Heights area.

Two years ago, to comply with state laws protecting airport-area residents from jet noise, the county zoned the noisiest areas of the 600-acre region for commercial and industrial use. The county also offered to buy homes that residents couldn’t sell, to be used for a business park.

The county said last year that it would build the stables on Mesa Drive if it could acquire the property. Riley said Tuesday that the county would not condemn private property just because the new owner does not want a stable there.

He also said the county no longer has the money for the stables, having committed instead to buy homes in the noisiest area or insulate them.

But if money becomes available, he said, “this issue can be re-evaluated.” He encouraged county staff members to see if an equestrian center would be feasible if the county acquired land for the long-proposed regional park beside Upper Newport Bay.

Erma Batham, who fought the county for years over airport noise and redevelopment plans before moving from Santa Ana Heights to Costa Mesa, told the supervisors Tuesday that the promised equestrian center was “a little crumb” to the community. “Now you’re going to throw away that little crumb. . . . They’ve been duped once more,” she said.

“We’ve been living under siege for years,” Durkee said, wondering what would happen to the area. “The only thing they offered us was the equestrian center. They’ve only taken things away from us.”