Mission Viejo Co. Joins Drive to Halt Trabuco Stadium

Plans for a long-awaited stadium for Mission Viejo’s Trabuco Hills High School--which now shares a football stadium with three other high schools--may again be delayed because the Mission Viejo Co. has joined forces with neighbors who do not want the complex near their homes.

Despite objections from a number of residents, trustees for the Saddleback Valley Unified School District approved plans in February to build a 5,000-seat stadium at the southwestern edge of the high school campus on Cordova Road near Los Alisos Boulevard.

Neighbors complained that the visitors’ bleachers would be 28 feet from back-yard fences of some homes, District Supt. Peter Hartman said, and that the games would generate too much noise and traffic.

Impact Report Requested

On Friday, the Mission Viejo Co. took a legal step to try to halt the plans. The company filed a writ of mandate in Orange County Superior Court, asking for a court order that would force the district to file an environmental impact report on a stadium.

The stadium is part of a larger sports complex for the high school that will include tennis courts, an all-weather track, a swimming pool and an auxiliary gymnasium.

Trabuco Hills High now plays its home football games at Mission Viejo High School, about five miles away; that facility serves all four district high schools.

Because the school district is its own legal entity, it is not required to obtain approval from the city for its stadium plans, Mission Viejo city planner Chuck Wilson said.

The district filed a declaration with the state that the proposed project did not require an environmental report because it would not greatly disrupt the neighborhood.

But residents and the Mission Viejo Co. disagreed, contending that the new stadium will create traffic jams and parking problems in the neighborhood and that the lights and noise during night games will disrupt the area’s quiet.

The district’s plans originally called for adding just 38 stadium parking spaces to the school’s current 405 slots. Bill Bonsall, one of the residents who is leading opposition to the stadium site, said that number is not nearly enough to handle game crowds.

The district at one point had proposed asking students to ride shuttle buses from other locations to the games.

“That’s a dream,” Bonsall said.

He emphasized that neighbors are not opposed to the idea of a stadium and they just want to make sure that the district provides adequate parking, or that it builds the stadium somewhere else, even on another part of the campus.

The deadline to file a protest to the district’s declaration was July 8, Mission Viejo Co. spokeswoman Wendy Wetzel said.

“We are not opposed to the stadium,” Wetzel said. “We just wanted to stop the clock.

“We are saying there have been some violations of (environmental impact) guidelines. We are saying, let’s go back and do it right.”

She added that the lawsuit is unrelated to a Mission Viejo Co. proposal to build a movie complex in the same neighborhood, which will go before the city Planning Commission soon for approval.

Supt. Hartman said he is surprised by the Mission Viejo Co.’s move, because it was the company that built and designed the city, even determining where the high school would be located. The company also graded the existing football field--the site for the proposed stadium.

Being Considered for Years

Hartman said he is also irked by residents coming around only in the last few months to complain about a plan that has been under consideration for years.

“For these people to be claiming they didn’t know about it is just absurd, absurd,” he said.