Unclogging the Arteries : Embattled Backers of Foothill Traffic Plan Call It Road to Future Quality of Life

By 7 a.m., the Santa Ana Freeway through Mission Viejo is a mass of hot, smelly, noisy, creeping cars. It’s a nightmare for any motorist, but particularly for those who moved to south Orange County’s green, rolling hills and scenic canyons to get away from that.

With the county’s only freeway south of Irvine jammed, thousands of commuters try to avoid the frustration by snaking along city streets.

But the only major artery running directly from the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains to north county is Trabuco Road, which becomes Irvine Boulevard along the way. And there are still crunch points on that road--where it squeezes down to two lanes near the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station--that back up almost daily for nearly a mile.

Takes Long Way Around

That’s too much for Jerry Hagstrom, a Lake Forest commuter who has found another route. He takes the long way around; Santiago Canyon Road. It’s a lot more miles, but it usually doesn’t jam up.

“At least you’re moving,” he said at a Mission Viejo service station on his way to work last week. “I moved here 10 years ago, and it took me 20 minutes to get to my office in Anaheim. Now it takes me an hour.

“This really was a nice place.”

Last February, in a hearing room crowded with developers, slow-growth advocates, homeowner groups and city officials, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez made a plea for a highly controversial program that he sees as the only chance to avoid gridlock in south Orange County.

“I believe the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan is an investment in our future that we cannot afford to lose,” he read with emotion from a prepared statement. “Today is a decisive day, where we proceed with the FCPP or we essentially walk (away from) the program.”

It was a long and testy meeting, but when it was over the supervisors had decided to proceed with the foothill plan, a $240-million system of new roads that mostly parallel the Santa Ana Freeway and are completely funded by developers.

But opponents of the plan, who say it will compound rather than solve the county’s growth problems, have promised to fight it in the courts and assured the supervisors that the battle is far from over.

To the general public in Orange County, the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan may be just another bureaucratic tongue-twister. But to the county’s elected officials and community and business leaders, it has emerged as a major factor in forecasts concerning the quality of life in Orange County well into the next century.

The foothill plan is directed at the county’s fastest-growing region, an area in Vasquez’s 3rd Supervisorial District just east of El Toro and Mission Viejo. Now, it has become the model for a plan to manage growth that the supervisors are hoping to apply to all of unincorporated Orange County.

County’s Most Crucial Issue

The mechanics of that plan are at the heart of the most crucial issue facing Orange County today: How can the area continue to grow through its adolescence without triggering the blight and economic maladies that often follow urbanization?

One proposal that has been offered as a solution is the slow-growth initiative on the countywide June 7 ballot. Another is the supervisors’ Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan.

Nationally, the plan is being watched by representatives of the Urban Land Institute in Washington. They say it is an unprecedented and innovative method of financing major road projects in an era of scarce financial resources.

It is one sketch of the future, drawn on a canvas of frustration.

There are 11 major developments planned in the foothill area that have already received the county’s blessing to build a total of about 37,000 new homes. They are communities like Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza, Foothill Ranch and Dove Canyon. And as they are built out, the stream of traffic onto roads headed north during the morning rush hour can only increase.

That is what convinced the county to create the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan.

The plan is a 1980s phenomenon that was made possible by new state legislation aimed at getting more private money for public roads.

Here is how it works:

The county plans to enter into agreements with all 11 developers in the foothill area. Under the agreements, the county will protect its construction projects from zoning changes and other future land-use decisions in return for the developers’ contributions to the road program.

The development agreements were made possible under 1980 legislation that followed a series of court decisions allowing local governments to change land-use rules even after development projects are initiated.

After the individual agreements are approved by the Board of Supervisors, the builders are to establish geographical areas called Community Facility Districts. The county then will sell bonds to obtain the money needed for roads in the area and will use the property within the Community Facilities Districts as collateral.

After the homes in a Community Facilities District are built and sold, the new homeowners will pay a special annual tax for up to 25 years that will go toward paying off the county’s bonds.

Taxes to Vary

The taxes to individual homeowners in the area covered by the foothill plan are expected to vary from project to project. Some homes in Mission Viejo, for example, will be taxed about $500 a year, while a more expensive house on Irvine Lake is expected to be billed about $1,200 a year.

County officials insist that the new homes in the area served by the foothill plan will generate only about 80% of the new road system’s traffic capacity, leaving 20% to absorb existing congestion. But not everyone believes those figures.

And that’s the rub.

Proponents of the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 ballot are skeptical of the county’s claim. And they are upset that the county will not include minimum traffic standards in its growth-management plans.

Under the slow-growth initiative, construction would not be allowed until specific traffic standards have been met.

“It’s once again, ‘Trust us,’ ” slow-growth activist Tom Rogers said of the county government’s approach to growth management. “We’ve been trusting them for 15 years, and look at the mess we’ve gotten into.”

Much of the foothill area is still untouched by the growth that has swallowed Southern California. Its hills are still grass-covered, and this time of year they are green and speckled with bright orange California poppies.

It’s the kind of countryside where horses still graze on pastures too big to see the other side, and where the fire engines are made to travel off-road.

Building Is Evident

However, on Santa Margarita Parkway, just east of Mission Viejo, building is evident: There are newly purchased homes, brand new vacant homes, house frames and graded hillsides.

In one community, a development of new homes with roofs in varying shades of gray is across the street from a development of homes with Spanish tile roofs, pink stucco walls and turquoise trim.

Rick Newton lives in Mission Viejo and works in Costa Mesa. Pumping gas into his car one recent morning, he complained about the traffic tie-ups he encounters now. But it was the construction of those new homes that worried him.

“That has to make it worse,” he said. “It’s landlocked in there, and it looks like there’s only one road out.”

Those who support the foothill plan say it is the only way to avoid traffic gridlock that could stymie development, drain the county’s tax base and increase unemployment.

There is not enough public money to build these roads, they say. And their chief complaint against the slow-growth initiative is that it does not provide a financing mechanism to relieve traffic problems the county already suffers.

“Without the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan, you would have absolute chaos,” said former Supervisor Bruce Nestande, the original architect of the foothill plan and now a vice president of Arnel Development Co.

“The roads now have to be made by linking major developments with road networks. That’s just the only way,” he said.

As a supervisor, it was Nestande who sold the concept of the foothill plan to the skeptical developers and then steered it through to passage by the board. And even since resigning from the board about a year ago, he has stayed active behind the scenes, shuttling between the supervisors, developers and slow-growth leaders, trying to keep the plan alive.

Negative Reaction

“It wasn’t met with open arms, I can assure you of that,” Nestande said recently of the developers’ initial response to the plan. “Their first reaction was business as usual and why should we be linked to a regional road system?

“My answer was: Whether you all want to admit it or not, there is a regional impact on roads. This (plan) was a recognition that there really was no other choice.”

Still, it took almost eight months before the 11 developers in the area stopped attacking the plan and started cooperating to make it work, Nestande said.

County officials and supervisors smile now when they think of those early days, when skeptical representatives of the 11 companies-- normally tough competitors--sat around the same table and negotiated how they were going to cooperate in the construction of a major road network.

“It was a very interesting dynamic to watch,” said Doug Wood, who represented the Dove Canyon Co. at the meetings. “I think all property owners tend to look at things very provincially--what’s in it for me, what’s it going to cost me? The evolution that occurred is that we were forced to look at the regional impact . . . to look beyond our own boundaries.”

Hugh Fitzpatrick of the Irvine Co. also remembers the foothill plan’s gestation period, before there was cooperation among the developers.

“It was difficult,” he said. “You are talking about competitors in a sharply competitive business and about very, very significant capital investments.

“There’s a big risk for developers in this--that they will actually be able to afford to build all of these facilities and still build the homes and office space and parks.”

The next crunch point for the plan came after the county had completed studies on what roads would be needed and it became necessary to assign to each company its share of the cost. Those negotiations fell to Vasquez, who succeeded Nestande last April.

Costs Assigned

When it was done, more than half of the total cost had been assigned to the three largest developers in the area. The Santa Margarita Co. will contribute about $83 million in return for protection for its plans to build about 12,000 new homes; Foothill Ranch will pay about $40 million for its 3,900 homes, and Coto de Caza was assigned about $24 million for its 4,600 homes.

So far, the board has approved six of the 11 development agreements that underlie the foothill plan. And even though they are opposed by the slow-growth initiative sponsors, they were praised at one public hearing by more than 20 speakers from cities, homeowner groups, businesses, environmental groups and labor.

“In the FCPP, we finally saw a breakthrough for those of us who may soon battle gridlock,” said Victoria Jaffee, a councilwoman from Mission Viejo. “We urge that the cooperative effort between the public and private sector be continued.”

Slow-growth leader Rogers endorsed the foothill plan when it was first proposed. He testified to the Board of Supervisors in 1986 that it was “a breath of fresh air.”

“It was the first time the board had taken a position that a transportation system of any kind would be mandated for development,” he said recently.

But Rogers said he since has become disillusioned with the plan because it is inadequate. If the foothill road plan does not work, he said, the developers can keep building once they have paid their money until traffic grinds to a halt.

County Counsel Adrian Kuyper has said that the development agreements negotiated for the foothill area will put the 37,000 new homes there out of the initiative’s reach. Under the terms of the agreements, the developments are protected from any changes in land-use restrictions, and that includes ballot initiatives, Kuyper said.

But slow-growth activists disagree, and they suggest it is an argument that may be decided in court.

HOW THE FOOTHILL PLAN WORKS

1. The Board of Supervisors approves agreements in which developers commit funds to the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan (FCPP) in return for up to 25 years of protection from zoning and other land-use changes. Agreements are created for each of 11 developers with separate projects.

2. Following approval of the development agreements, the landowner applies for the creation of a Community Facilities District within his project site--the area in the project that will be assessed the cost of the FCPP.

3. The county government sells bonds, using the property in the Community Facilities District as collateral.

4. Money from the bond sale pays for building the roads in the FCPP. The first bond sale is scheduled for May; construction is expected to begin this year.

5. The homes are built and then bought. The new homeowners in the Community Facilities District are billed annually for up to 25 years to pay for the bonds.