Dove Canyon: Of Old Oaks and New Homes
As a boy growing up in Northern California, Garth Chambers was surrounded by ancient oak trees that took on a near-legendary meaning for him.
“Oak was the tree of substance,” Chambers said. “You looked to the golden hills and they were spotted with the oaks.”
In Orange County these days, few children live near old oak trees, and being surrounded by wildlife in the canyon of a mountain range is usually just a play-land fantasy.
At Dove Canyon, a 1,300-home planned community opening this weekend in southeast Orange County, Chambers, now a 43-year-old developer, has spent $1.1 million to preserve 113 oak and three sycamore trees, some that have grown on the land for more than 200 years.
The trees, which line the entrance to the development and also will be scattered around an 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, are surrounded by that nature fantasy land.
At the foothill of the Saddleback Mountain range, Dove Canyon is just west of the 3,900-acre National Audubon Society Starr Ranch sanctuary, which borders Caspers Regional Wilderness Park. To the north of Dove Canyon is the Cleveland National Forest.
While it all makes for spectacular scenery, with mountain peaks a standard view from bedroom windows, some of the nearby land is not for public wandering.
The sanctuary, for instance, is a preserve for rare plants and animals and security to keep out trespassers is tight.
While Chambers enjoyed the landscape near his boyhood home in the foothills of Modesto, and he spent a year during college working for the National Forest Service, he says he’s not an environmentalist.
“I’m a developer,” he stated flatly. “I don’t want to come across like I’m Johnny Appleseed. I’m moving millions of yards of dirt. . . . The basis for this is profit. . . .
“But I’m a developer who believes an appropriate marriage can be made with the environment.”
In 1986, when Chambers looked at buying the land that was once part of the estate of Eugene and Applin Starr, one of his first visits was with Jeff Froke, then director of the Starr Ranch Sanctuary.
‘He Was a Realist’
“I knew that we’d have to work together. Jeff Froke didn’t want a lot of houses here. But he was a realist. He extracted from me the maximum he could for me to still have an economic motive for developing,” Chambers said.
(According to real estate experts, Chambers paid between $70 million and $80 million for the 874-acre site.)
As part of an agreement with Froke, Chambers is preserving 309 acres as a buffer zone between Dove Canyon and the Audubon sanctuary.
Also, he will install special fencing along the sanctuary boundary to deter humans, but not injure wildlife. And he has agreed to install a runoff treatment system to prevent excess golf course irrigation from contaminating the sanctuary or flowing down Dove Creek and into Bell Creek, both of which are normally dry during much of the year.
That some of the surroundings will be for looking, not touching, isn’t a drawback, Chambers says. “We’re building on some of the best land out here,” he said.
Inside Dove Canyon, which also borders the Coto de Caza development, homes will be built on a 25-acre lake, along the golf course and near its clubhouse, at the foot of the mountains and near a swim and tennis club.
Several Home Styles
Styles will range from ranch to ocean, mountains to prairie, the Mediterranean to Spain and Santa Barbara to Monterey.
“This is not going to be a community of red-tiled roofs. A single style will not stand out,” Chambers promised.
Bruce Akins, a partner in Akins Development, one of five builders at Dove Canyon, said:
“Drive through the really nice old neighborhoods of Newport Beach, like Lido Isle or Emerald Bay (in Laguna Beach), and you’ll see lots of styles. We’re having six or seven styles that all work together.”
Roofs are as likely to be concrete as they are tile, and smooth as they are textured; and sidings are as likely to be real cedar wood as they are copper or brick.
Other Builders
“Out one side of the home may be the Saddleback Mountains, and the other the lights of Santa Margarita,” said Carole Dann, vice president of marketing for A-M Homes, another builder. The other builders are Marlborough Development, D.T. Smith Industries and Custom Living Homes and Communities.
Prices will range from $300,000 to $500,000 for most of the homes, which will generally be from 1,960 to 2,500 square feet in size. Houses planned by Custom Living Homes in its Fairway Ridge community will begin at $500,000, and another of its communities at about $650,000, with houses there up to 3,900 square feet.
Although cultures and styles are mixed, Chambers said the overall look of the development will blend, right down to the stone on the border fence that matches the color of the rock in the mountains.
Akins said his firm is building some of its homes to blend with the plethora of oak trees. “We found a source for Sequoia redwoods that goes great with the oak wood,” he said.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say homeowners will be putting in oaks, or that this will become a theme of the area. But they’re hundreds of years old. That sets a style.”
