Coto de Caza Developer Gets Board Backing

Orange County supervisors approved by a 3-2 vote Wednesday an agreement with the Coto de Caza Development Co. despite vigorous opposition from Coto de Caza residents who say it changes--without public debate--the original plan for their private community.

The agreement protects the company’s plan to build 4,610 additional homes in exchange for its financing $25-million worth of road improvements in south Orange County.

“We are obviously very disappointed,” said Ronald Martin, a spokesman for the Coto de Caza Joint Homeowners Committee, an umbrella group for Coto de Caza residents’ associations.

At issue for residents is whether the original plan for Coto de Caza requires the developer to operate a conference center, among other amenities in the community just east of Mission Viejo. The residents say it does.

However, the developer, backed by the county Planning Department staff and the county counsel, says the plan allows the center but does not require it.

The agreement approved Wednesday, which dealt only peripherally with the disputed conference center, states that the developer is not obligated to operate the center.

How They Voted

Voting against the agreement were Supervisors Gaddi M. Vasquez and Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. Board Chairwoman Harriett M. Wieder and Supervisors Don R. Roth and Thomas F. Riley voted for it.

After the board vote, Wieder aide Ed Mountford said the supervisors had been drawn into the longstanding dispute between the residents of Coto de Caza over what the developer had--and had not--promised when they bought their homes.

“This was not your standard developer’s agreement,” Mountford said. “A lot of extraneous things that really have nothing to do with the agreement have been dragged in.”

Vasquez, whose district includes the developed portion of Coto de Caza, since early March had requested delays on the board’s vote on the agreement, seeking to get the dispute resolved first.

Before Wednesday’s vote, Vasquez chided the developer for what he called an inability to communicate with the residents.

“I’m not prepared to support this agreement until this issue is resolved,” Vasquez said. “We have to strike a balance and find a compromise.”

He later added that negotiations between the residents and the developer had continued until Tuesday night, but that the developer had taken a “very strong stand” on the issue of the conference center.

Martin of the homeowners committee, who was with about 60 other Coto de Caza residents at the board meeting Wednesday, said the requirement for the conference center and other amenities are contained in a 1982 specific plan for the community that was approved by the county Planning Commission.

The company built a conference center and guest lodge, then closed it, Martin said, and has failed to provide some of the other promised amenities, such as a hiking trail and recreation center.

Many of the residents’ objections have been resolved over the past several weeks, he said, and those resolutions were worked into the developer agreement. No such resolution, however, could be reached on the conference center itself.

Kevin Canning, a representative of the developer, told the supervisors Wednesday that operating the conference center was not economically feasible. But Martin said no evidence has been offered to back up that contention.

“What they want to do now is pick and choose what they like and what they don’t like,” Martin said. “That’s fine, except that there are consequences, and they have to resolve these issues in a public forum.”

Unlike proponents of the county’s proposed slow-growth initiative, residents of Coto de Caza, Martin said, support the basic concept of developer agreements, which protect projects from future changes in zoning and other land-use restrictions.

The county supervisors already have approved several such agreements with individual developers amid strong opposition from proponents of the slow-growth initiative, which if approved by voters June 7 will strictly tie growth in the county to the availability of roads and adequate municipal services.

Supporters of the initiative have filed lawsuits over six of the developer agreements, accusing the supervisors of hurriedly pushing them through in order to circumvent the initiative, should it be win voter approval.

Stanton has been the only supervisor who has consistently voted against the agreements. He has said that he has done so on the grounds that legal entanglements that could arise from the agreements could lower the county’s bond market rating.