CENTRAL : ORANGE : City Defers Decision on Parkridge Hills

The City Council has put off a decision on the controversial Parkridge Hills project, a 195-acre, 350-home planned community.

By a 4-0 vote Tuesday night, the council decided to take the matter up again during a Nov. 28 meeting.

“It’s a disappointment,” said Robert D. Mickelson, planning consultant for the Tracy Building Corp. of Rancho Santa Margarita, which is planning the project.

The development is on 195 acres north of Serrano Avenue, just east of Villa Park and south of Anaheim.

Council members said they put off the vote because they did not have time to study the environmental impact report before the meeting.

But Robert L. Klotz, an attorney representing the Mabury Ranch homeowners association, a 385-unit planned community just south of the project, dismissed the environmental impact report as inadequate.

Mabury Ranch residents argued that the development would infringe on their privacy because some of the new homes would sit on a plateau carved out of a hill.

One resident complained that the homes on the plateau “will be quite literally ‘looking down’ on Mabury Ranch and eliminate the privacy the residents . . . have previously enjoyed.”

Mabury Ranch homeowners also argued that the development would add traffic to the already congested streets in the area.