NORTH AND SOUTH: Which Side Are You On? : Future ‘Urban Center’ Rises in South County

There was a time when Tina Menkal would drive out to the base of Saddleback from her Santa Ana home to visit friends and wonder why in the world anyone would want to live so far away from the heart of the county, in all that heat and isolation.

Today, Menkal is a proud and enthusiastic resident of that very area. True, a “for sale” sign stands in front of her home in Rancho Santa Margarita, the burgeoning community on the other side of Mission Viejo. But she and her family are moving only a mile or two away to a bigger, nicer home in, yes, Rancho Santa Margarita, Orange County’s newest--and still emerging--planned community.

“We love it. We wouldn’t live any other place,” Menkal says now of the community that developers call southern Orange County’s “urban center of the future.”

If all goes as planned, the turn of the century will find Rancho Santa Margarita grown from its present population of 11,000 to nearly 50,000, with 26,000 jobs in the community. There will be shops, offices, businesses, industry, day-care centers, schools, movie theaters, a main street, a golf course, a health club--even a museum--all squeezed onto 5,000 acres, with more than half the space devoted to parks, greenbelts and other forms of open space.

Rancho Santa Margarita is the most ambitious of several new planned communities destined for the area, and it is the type of development that residents of the South County prefer, according to The Times Orange County Poll. The poll found that 59% of residents there look favorably on planned communities, a preference that grows with income. By contrast, less than half--47%--of residents in the North County said they preferred planned communities, which have a uniform appearance and community codes and regulations.

Overall, county residents were evenly split in their opinion of planned communities in southern Orange County: Half would like to live in one, half wouldn’t.

Critics of Rancho Santa Margarita say that it has simply had too much development--made up of look-alike houses and condominiums, at that--on what was once idyllic ranchland in an area already choked with traffic.

But it is a forward-looking plan that will put people, work and entertainment together to keep residents off congested highways, says a noted urban affairs professor, although two unknowns--whether the plan will be followed to the letter and whether the economy will remain strong enough to attract business to the area--could jeopardize the community’s success.

“It could be a real gem, if you keep your fingers crossed,” said former UC Irvine professor Ray Catalano, a slow-growth advocate and one-time Irvine city councilman who recently joined the faculty at UC Berkeley.

There is no chamber of commerce in Rancho Santa Margarita, but residents spread the message just fine without one.

They rave about the friendliness of their neighbors, the swimming lagoon at the village’s man-made lake, the abundance of activities organized by the community association as well as by groups of newfound friends, their homes’ escalating value and the chance to help shape a new community. They say they enjoy the small-town atmosphere--even as construction trucks rumble past.

And then there is the view. Residents say they love stepping out their front doors and looking practically straight up at Saddleback’s peaks towering over the community’s sea of red tile roofs, dotted by palm trees.

“We call this Orange County’s Palm Springs,” said Judy Lewis, who moved to Rancho Santa Margarita from Anaheim more than two years ago. “I love it. I thank God every time I drive over the bridge (on the road leading to Rancho Santa Margarita) when I head home.”

One former resident said the early facilities, such as playground equipment for all the new families, were inadequate, and there were too many homes in the community for its country-like image and setting. Further, unless residents work in the Saddleback Valley, the commute is too far on roads inadequate to handle the traffic, the former resident said.

Just give it time, say representatives of the developer, the Santa Margarita Co.

They bill Rancho Santa Margarita as an “urban village” and say that, when it is completed, it will consolidate homes for all income levels with jobs, recreation, shopping and entertainment in a single setting. And while the Foothill Transportation Corridor and other roads are planned to lessen the traffic crunch, the development of industry, offices and stores in Rancho Santa Margarita will keep residents in town and cut down on the need to get on the new thoroughfares, they say.

“I don’t know if you can build utopia, but we’re trying to get close,” said Don Moe, the company’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate affairs.

“This is going to be the urban center of the future for this part of the county,” added Tony Moiso, president of Santa Margarita Co.

Physically, Rancho Santa Margarita--or RSM, as some residents call it--looks like a crossbreed of Mission Viejo and Irvine. Lago Santa Margarita, the community’s 13-acre lake, is smaller and more egalitarian than Lake Mission Viejo, or even the two Woodbridge lakes in Irvine: It is encircled by a walkway accessible to all residents, and townhouses and condominiums surround the water to give more homeowners a lake view.

As in Irvine’s Woodbridge village, Rancho Santa Margarita residents must belong to the community association, entitling them to use the private beach club, parks and other recreational facilities, and requiring them to adhere to rules governing their homes’ landscaping and maintenance and exterior color schemes. (Purple, for example, requires the permission of a neighborhood architectural standards committee.)

While Rancho Santa Margarita’s Spanish-Early California style homes are reminiscent of Mission Viejo, the web of greenbelts, community recreation facilities and--perhaps most important--the plans to lure industry and businesses are reminiscent of Irvine.

The similarity to Irvine and Mission Viejo is no accident, Catalano said. Both are notable planned communities but neither could be, or should be, duplicated in Rancho Santa Margarita, he said.

Irvine stands apart because of its immense size and propitious location for major industry--its proximity to the airport and the county’s geographic center, he said. And Mission Viejo was designed to be a bedroom community--a design that is no longer acceptable, given today’s realities of jammed freeways.

Consequently, Rancho Santa Margarita was conceived as a more “internalized” community to emphasize the balance between work and home, Catalano said. “If they can deliver the employment base, they’re going to have something special out there.”

The community’s appearance--”it does look like it came out of the same genetic matter”--is to be expected because it was built in a short period of time with high density, Catalano said.

Further, because developers are trying to build homes at lower costs, there cannot be much custom design, he said. Initially, homes were surprisingly affordable--from $55,000 for a condominium to $200,000 for the most expensive (although small) single-family homes, according to the developer. (Today’s real estate market, however, has made prices comparable to the rest of the region, with new homes priced from $100,000 for a small condominium to $500,000 for a large house on the golf course.)

And rows of small, closely spaced, look-alike, single-family homes aren’t the most architecturally interesting.

“The aesthetic impact of large-scale development does turn people off,” Catalano said. But that can be remedied somewhat, he said, by “taking prominent sites and doing clever things. If you spend time and money on design solutions now, it will pay off in the long run. After everything is built, you don’t want to be remembered for how much money you made, but what you left to the community.”

True, 50,000 people on 5,000 acres--further reduced by parks, lake, golf course and greenbelts--means high density in some areas of Rancho Santa Margarita, company president Moiso acknowledged.

For example, there are 30 units to the acre in one development on the lake, and similar density is planned in one area along the golf course. But that permits housing to be priced lower, so people who work in Rancho Santa Margarita can afford to live there, he said. “Besides,” added Moiso, a great-grandson of Richard O’Neill Sr., the founder of Rancho Mission Viejo, “our back yard is one of the greatest outdoors.”

On a recent afternoon he surveyed the development from above in a helicopter, pointing out the expanses of open ranchland all around Rancho Santa Margarita that is impossible to develop.

“When you look at all this,” he said of the remote rolling hills, “you see that there’s no way you could ever build on everything out here.”

But while the developers see Rancho Santa Margarita as a planned community of the future, residents there now make it sound more like a small town out of the 1950s, like Orange County in the post-war years, full of new homes, new families and new friends.

Among the first Rancho Santa Margarita residents who set up households in the fall of 1986, many are stay-at-home mothers active in PTA and other family-oriented programs. Several residents said they never see anyone older than 40, and almost everyone has young children.

Diane Egan, 28, and her husband bought their first home in Rancho Santa Margarita nearly three years ago and became parents last month. “I feel like I finally fit in,” she said.

Rancho Santa Margarita residents, unlike those in many Orange County communities, know all the neighbors on their block and sometimes in the next tract of homes down the road.

“Everyone put their lawns in together,” explained Debbie Sullens, PTA president at Trabuco Mesa Elementary School.

“At first, the thought of being isolated out here was devastating,” said Nancy Thompson, who moved with her husband and two children from Santa Ana. “But then we would see the wildlife and the cattle and the stars at night in the clear air. We started meeting people. There aren’t a lot of children on this street, but the neighborhood became a family because we were all out in the middle of nowhere together.”

The first residents jokingly call themselves “pioneers” because they were literally settling a new area. And they faced hardships of sorts.

“If you wanted something to be done, you had to do it,” Tina Menkal said. She recalled her neighborhood’s first Halloween--just a few weeks after she and only a handful of families had moved there in October, 1986. The street lights had not even been connected.

“It was perfect. It was so eerie. Still, someone in the next tract over had a big Halloween party for the few people who were here,” she said.

Even the supermarket--or lack of one--made residents pull together. In most communities, the neighborhood grocery store is taken for granted, but none of the “pioneers” regard the 6-month-old Ralphs that way. For more than two years, they had to drive five miles to a jam-packed store in Mission Viejo. The trek was bearable when they made weekly shopping trips, but when they all they needed was a loaf of bread, it was maddening.

So instead of running to the store, residents ran next door to borrow. And when it came time to make the weekly trip to the store, the borrower returned the favor by offering to pick up a few groceries for the neighbor.

Nancy Thompson responded to the supermarket shortage by organizing a produce co-op with neighbors. Married to an employee of a wholesale produce firm in Costa Mesa, Thompson was able to get bargain prices as well as field-fresh fruits and vegetables. Two and a half years later, the co-op of 24 women still gathers at her house every week, and friendships have sprung from the group. On a recent Monday morning, members divvied up that week’s shipment of watermelons, mangoes, grapes, bananas, romaine lettuce and red potatoes as they exchanged family and neighborhood news.

“Everything is planned and clean,” said Casie Peterson, mother of the first baby to have Rancho Santa Margarita listed as its place of birth. (Peterson delivered her daughter, Rachel, on July 7, 1987, in the Peterson home eight months after the family moved in.) “I grew up in Long Beach, and it’s such a different feel here, with all the wires underground and all the greenbelts so nicely taken care of.”

However, some elements of Rancho Santa Margarita life require getting used to, residents say. First is the weather.

Jim Neidert, a real estate agent, said Rancho Santa Margarita consistently is eight degrees hotter in the summer than neighboring Mission Viejo. “The newspapers should have a separate weather map for here,” another resident said. But the heat is made bearable by staying in air-conditioned homes or heading for the pools or beach club at the lake, residents say.

Santa Ana winds are fierce at the base of the mountain, and winter can even bring a smattering of snow on a rare occasion.

Residents must also become accustomed to confusion over the town’s name. Judy Lewis recalled the time she tried to order merchandise by phone, but the department store’s computer refused to recognize the new community. Real estate agent Neidert said his family’s mail sometimes has traveled to Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County or Santa Margarita, near San Luis Obispo.

Further, residents must get used to driving, at least until more shops and businesses move into town.

“I make a trip to South Coast Plaza once a month just to get a fix,” said Nancy Thompson, who used to live less than a mile away from the mega-mall.

While the poll found that most South County residents work in the area, Tina Menkal said her husband, Brian, works in Carson. He drives 150 miles a day. But because his hours are 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., he spends less time on the road than he did when he worked regular hours in Newport Beach.

She too is on the road a lot, visiting relatives in Huntington Beach--a trek from Rancho Santa Margarita that is just about the same distance as driving from northern Orange County to Los Angeles.

“Once you move out here, you learn that mileage is nothing,” Tina Menkal said.

And last, there is the ever-present construction truck traffic and dust--a constant reminder that the small, close-knit community is growing. Some residents say they are not bothered by the prospect because more people will mean promised amenities--shops, restaurants, movie theaters and other conveniences they now do without.

“I keep seeing Rancho Santa Margarita down the road,” Neidert said. “I see the Foothill Transportation Corridor coming through. It will make the town just that much more desirable.”

Judy Lewis, though, wishes the construction would stop. “I want the cattle to stay. I don’t want my city to grow. Of course, I have my house now, so I can say that,” she said with a laugh.

The steady stream of new people moving in is changing the community, some residents said. The “pioneers” migrated to Rancho Santa Margarita from such older cities as Westminster, Santa Ana and Garden Grove, amazed that they could purchase new single family homes--albeit a bit cramped--for about $135,000, often on a single income.

But in the past three years, housing prices have escalated, attracting more double-income families who own homes in more fashionable neighborhoods and have less time for neighborhood involvement, the residents say.

“They’re more on the yuppie side,” said co-op organizer Thompson.

Real estate agent Neidert said Rancho Santa Margarita initially was a tremendous real estate bargain. Now prices are catching up to the rest of Orange County, with no single-family homes currently being listed for resale at less than $200,000. A lot of his clients are residents selling to cash in on their equity and get bigger, fancier houses in the same community but along the future golf course at prices of up to $500,000.

Neidert, father of two, had to camp out for 13 days to be able to buy his Rancho Santa Margarita home in 1986, before he got into the real estate business for a living. Camping out for homes there still goes on today, but the style is different. The people spending their days and nights next to the sales office just a few weeks ago were “professional campers,” senior citizens with recreational vehicles hired by prospective home buyers for about $65 a day to keep their place in line.

One prospective buyer, who now owns a home in El Toro, said she wants a house there because she believes the property around the golf course will appreciate. “In Southern California, the choicest property, after beach property, is on golf courses, I’ve heard,” said the woman, a secretary who asked that her name not be used. She hired a camper, she said, because she believes guaranteeing she gets the home she wants is worthwhile.

Tina Menkal might be one of her neighbors. The one-time reluctant Rancho Santa Margarita resident plans to move her family of four into a $320,000 golf course home, capitalizing on the equity in their nearly 3-year-old home--bought for $134,000, selling for $255,000.

She and her husband wanted a bigger home but decided against moving to a different community.

“We have everything here,” Menkal said. “We had no reason to leave.”

THE RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA MASTER PLAN South County residents favor planned communities, according to a the Times Orange County Poll, and the biggest and newest planned community in that region is the emerging of Rancho Santa Margarita. Nestled between Mission Viejo and Saddleback, the community of red tile roofs and Early California-style homes is being billed as South County’s urban center of the future.

Population: About 11,000. Expected to grow to 50,000.

Size: 5,000 acres, more than half of which is devoted to open space. Located on the 15,000-acre property of the Santa Margarita Co., which is part of the 40,000-acre Rancho Mission Viejo.

Employment: 3,500 at 65,000 businesses. Expected to grow to 26,000, including a 400-acre business park.

Housing prices: From $100,000 for the lowest-priced townhouse to $500,000 for the most expensive single-family home on the golf course. Rents range from $600 to $850 a month. Three years ago, housing prices ranged from $55,000 to

$200,000. According to 1988 data, 53% of Rancho Santa Margarita’s home buyers purchased their first homes there. The county requires the developer to

provide 26.3% of the units, including apartments, as affordable housing.

Density: Ranges from three to four single-family detached homes per acre to 25 to 30 apartment units per acre.

Association rules: All households must belong to Rancho Santa Margarita Landscape and Recreation Committee--which maintains the community’s parks, greenbelts and other common areas. Monthly fee is $34. Residents must adhere to regulations concerning front yard landscaping, house color, room additions and anything altering the exterior of any building.

Amenities: 13-acre private, man-made lake, Lago Santa Margarita, and 18-hole public golf course, expected to open in

summer of 1990, plus parks and greenbelts.

Residents: Mdian age, 32, median household income, $55,400, and six of every 10 households consist of two or more wage earners. Majority have children.

Mix of single-family homes, condominiums, apartments at the community’s opening:

One apartment neighborhood, six townhouse neighborhoods, five single-family, detached-home neighborhoods.

Currently: Three apartment neighborhoods, 14 townhouse neighborhoods, 10 single-family, detached-home neighborhoods.

Developer: Santa Margarita Co. president is Anthony Moiso, great-grandson of Richard O’Neill Sr.

Source: Santa Margarita Co.

HISTORY OF RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA Developers planned to call the community “Santa Margarita,” but the residents of a San Luis Obispo County town--also called Santa Margarita--objected.

1882: The 233,000-acre Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores was purchased by Richard O’Neill Sr. and James Flood.

1923: The Santa Margarita Co. was originally established.

1930s: 17,500 acres (now encompassing Caspers Wilderness Park and Coto de Caza) were sold to Eugene Starr and Ernest Bryant.

1942: Company dissolved when Flood’s half, in the south, and half of O’Neill’s interest, near San Onofre, were sold to the Navy and became Camp Pendleton.

1950: O’Neill Regional Park dedicated to county.

1963: Another 10,000 acres were sold when the Mission Viejo Co. was established.

1969: Nearly 30,000 acres were put in agricultural preserve in an agreement with the county.

1982: 5,000 acres--called Plano Trabuco--were removed from the preserve and zoned to become the planned community of Rancho Santa Margarita.

1983: The Santa Margarita Co. was re-established to develop the community.

1986: First houses, under construction, were offered for sale in May, 1986. First residents moved in during the fall of 1986.

Source: Santa Margarita Co.