Historic Farmhouse Is in the Way : Ortega Project Hits Yet Another Obstacle

The widening of a stretch of Ortega Highway near San Juan Capistrano has been pushed back for the third time because the state architectural historian has declared a clapboard farmhouse in the path of the project to be an historic property, Caltrans officials said Friday.

The widening is one of six of the county’s 20 top-priority road projects to have encountered further delays during the last three months, according to a quarterly progress report issued this week by the Orange County Transportation Commission staff.

The other five are the widening of Pacific Coast Highway between Beach Boulevard and Golden West Street in Huntington Beach, and between Orange Avenue in Newport Beach and Brookhurst Street, also in Huntington Beach; the rebuilding of the Santa Ana (5) Freeway interchange at Jeffrey Road; the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway-Ball Road overpass, and the widening of the San Diego (405) Freeway between the Corona del Mar and Santa Ana freeways.

The added delays range from two to five months, the commission report states; reasons such as design changes and failures by consulting firms to complete plans and specifications on time are given.

Commission Executive Director Stan Oftelie described these delays as “relatively minor,” but he acknowledged that they are in addition to other, earlier slowdowns on 15 of the county’s top 20 highway projects.

The report lists eight projects that previously were behind schedule but that have not slipped further behind, bringing the combined total of projects now being delayed to 14.

For example, the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway between the Garden Grove (22) and San Gabriel River (605) freeways has been 12 months behind schedule since early last year, as previous commission reports have shown.

Five projects are still proceeding on time, and one--the reconstruction of the interchange between the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways--is already under way.

In San Juan Capistrano, the farmhouse is but the latest obstacle to the straightening and widening of the Ortega Highway, scene of numerous traffic fatalities.

Other Reasons for Delays

First, the project was delayed by environmental concern over the raptor--an endangered species of bird that nests in the 600 live oak trees that were to be removed in the hills behind San Juan Capistrano as part of the project. Caltrans is considering ways to spare the trees.

Then it was by a 400- to 500-year-old Indian archeological site on San Juan Creek. The Caltrans project is to be changed to save that site.

The 1912 clapboard farmhouse, a duplex, is part of the estate of Edwin Rosenbaum, a member of one of the earliest families in the area. It is located in a 10-acre orange grove that juts into a curve of the highway. Barriers have been erected to keep cars and trucks from crashing into the building.

The farmhouse is the last example of so-called single-wall board and batten construction on the Ortega Highway, said Larry Loudon, a Caltrans highway project development supervisor based in Los Angeles.

The cost of moving the building, now occupied by renters, is estimated at $250,000 to $300,000. Loudon said it may be moved to the rear of the property.

Alternatives are being studied, and the starting date for the Ortega Highway project has been pushed back from November, 1989 to June, 1990.

PROJECTS DELAYED

The six highway projects encountering new delays during the past quarter include:

- Pacific Coast Highway widening between Beach Boulevard and Golden West Street in Huntington Beach.

- Pacific Coast Highway bridge widening between Orange Avenue in Newport Beach and Brookhurst Street in Huntington Beach.

- Interstate 5 interchange reconstruction at Jeffrey Road in Irvine.

- Interstate 5/Ball Road overcross widening in Anaheim.

- California 74 (Ortega Highway) between Avenida Siega and Avenida La Pata.

- Interstate 405 widening between Interstate 5 and the Corona del Mar Freeway (California 73).