January Start Predicted for Talega Valley

Talega Valley, a long-delayed, 5,000-home development envisioned as South County’s newest planned community, could be under construction as early as January, project developers said Thursday.

The 3,510-acre development, a project of Florida-based Arvida Corp., would create a huge planned community of homes, shops and hotels in a swath of land extending from just south of the Ortega Highway down to Camp Pendleton and the San Diego County line.

The project has been on the drawing board for years and in the hands of several developers, and it has consistently drawn opposition from conservationists and groups concerned about its effect on traffic.

But Arvida officials now say that while they are awaiting final approval from the county and the city of San Clemente, it appears that everything will be ready for ground-breaking after the first of the year.

As envisioned, the project will consist of a mixture of residential housing, starting with one- and two-bedroom condominiums in the $125,000 range to half-acre luxury homes with a price ceiling of $500,000.

The community, split into the developments of “Champion Hills” and “Rolling Hills,” will also feature two golf courses, at least two hotels, business parks, shopping centers and a 1,200-acre conservancy of California live oak trees.

Kevin Canning, Arvida’s director of planning, said the company is dealing with both the county and the city of San Clemente in implementing the project.

Arvida’s projections are to have the first home occupied by early 1991, when the first phase of 700 homes in Rolling Hills are expected to be completed, Canning said.

Last year, county officials approved plans for 1,906 acres of the project, called “Rolling Hills,” and the San Clemente City Council approved preliminary plans for 1,604 adjoining acres called “Champion Hills.”

Several of the 31 tracts created for the county portion of the development were approved earlier this month, with more expected to be approved next week, Canning said.

Meanwhile, San Clemente officials have yet to give their final approval for four tracts totaling 414 homes. City planning commissioners considered the tracts this week but continued their discussion to Wednesday. Complicating the approval process in San Clemente is a 1986 city law limiting growth to 500 new homes per year. Under the law, passed by a ballot initiative vote, all developers in the city must vie for a portion of permits in an annual competition judged by the City Council.

Canning said the law will slow the development of San Clemente’s part of Talega Valley but added that he was confident the entire project would eventually be built.

“We consider this a single project,” Canning said. “The two different entities are not really a constraint because the total project works, and the two components work. One part is not dependent on the other.”

Addressing the concern over traffic, county and city planners have agreed to a developer-fee program that will provide $70 million for new roads.

“The county and the city have agreed to treat this as one big project because of the extensive infrastructure,” said San Clemente city planner James Barnes, referring to a network of roads and sewer and water lines.

Development of Talega Valley will also be controlled under a county Growth Management Plan, adopted last year by the Board of Supervisors. The plan attempts to ensure that construction will not outpace provisions for new roads and public services, according to Robert Peterson, county transportation planning manager.

“We will make sure that development doesn’t overtake road construction,” Peterson said.

Still, critics charge that the project is too dependent on the construction of the proposed Foothill Transportation Corridor and worry that as homes are built before the new freeway opens, new commuters will be funneled onto the already-congested San Diego Freeway and local surface streets.

The Foothill corridor is a proposed tollway linking central and south Orange County, east of Interstate 5, and is not expected to be completed until the mid-1990s.

Earlier this week, the project came under attack by the Saddleback Area Coordinating Council, a citizens advisory group that reports to county planners.

“It amazes me that you think the county is going to accept the traffic here,” said committee member Janice Graham. The Coordinating Council said the Talega Valley development relies too heavily on the proposed Foothill corridor to ease the additional traffic that would be created by people moving to the new community.

“The Foothill Corridor is an integral part of this project,” council president Ron Greek said, “and it must be completed before the project can be viable.”

Canning denied that the corridor was essential to the development, saying that South County “really needs the corridor regionally, but our project is not dependent on it.”

Mo Tidemanis, Arvida’s vice president of construction and development, said it would take about 10 years to complete the project.

Tidemanis said there is the possibility that the portion of the project not in San Clemente may eventually be annexed by the city.