Board OKs Compromise to Reduce Size of Laguna Niguel Tract : Development: Shapell Industries will cut the number of homes in Country Village by 291 and increase the amount of parkland by another five acres.

After years of bitter fighting, a lawsuit and a grand jury investigation, the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved a compromise plan allowing completion of the largest single housing development in Laguna Niguel.

On the eve of a vote next month on cityhood for the area, both developer Shapell Industries Inc. and longtime critics of the size of the once-controversial venture agreed on a slightly scaled-back plan that includes more public parkland. That plan, reducing the number of homes by 291, overcame its largest major bureaucratic hurdle when it was unanimously endorsed by supervisors.

Shapell’s Country Village development was the first large housing tract to be approved by supervisors under a development agreement, which guaranteed building rights in return for contributions toward roads, fire stations, libraries and parks. Shapell, of Beverly Hills, has completed about half the project on 1,232 acres.

Supervisors praised the compromise.

“Good people get together and good things can happen,” said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder. The action Wednesday represented the first time the supervisors have made a change in any of the more than 20 development agreements they have signed since 1987.

“This is a very important action,” said Thomas B. Mathews, executive assistant to County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Laguna Niguel. “The significance is in the timing as Laguna Niguel is on the eve of incorporating. . . . It’s my impression (that) if it becomes a city in November it will have its hands full. It’s good that they get this resolved.

“The action today is an outstanding gift from a major developer and the existing leaders in the community. There was a lot of hard work that went into this,” Mathews said.

Residents in Laguna Niguel will vote next month whether to incorporate into a city.

“I think we have cleared all the major hurdles now,” said Tom Wilson, the head of the Laguna Niguel Community Council. “We did not want to have this as an issue during the transition from a community to cityhood.”

The proposal approved by the supervisors Wednesday would:

* Decrease the maximum number of dwelling units by 291, from 4,777 to 4,486.

* Strengthen requirements for parkland within the project and increase the amount of regional and local parkland by five acres.

* Allow residential uses in a business park district.

Supervisors will vote next week to include the changes made Wednesday in Laguna Niguel’s area plan. But the vote Wednesday was considered the critical hurdle to the development. The county is also going to ask Shapell for 3.95 acres of land for wetlands.

William D. Ross, an attorney for Shapell, said a major hurdle was cleared Wednesday. “Any time you get the board to vote on a project you have jumped a hurdle,” Ross said.

Longtime project critic Cindy O’Neal, a member of the Laguna Niguel Community Council, reminded supervisors Wednesday of her many appearances complaining about the development. At times, she said, she was particularly upset because of the inaccuracies in the acreage figures of the project in the different documents controlling the size and density of Country Village.

In an interview after the meeting, O’Neal, once among the most vocal opponents, said she dropped her three-year fight against the project because of two important concessions from the developer and a new spirit of “consensus planning” by both county officials and Shapell executives. “I hope consensus planning becomes the norm and not the exception,” O’Neal said.

She said Shapell dropped plans to build 144 apartments behind a Vons shopping center, instead designating the site as parkland.

Also, she said, over the years the company has agreed to drop a total of 955 units overall, which she said is beneficial in a community that has had 250% growth in the past eight years.

“I started fighting on this issue three years ago,” she said. “For the last 2 1/2 years I’ve devoted my life to it. I’ve been a little single-minded. But today, how do I feel? I feel like people can sit down and work out their differences. At times I wanted to give up out of sheer exhaustion, but I never did because I knew I was right and I was not prepared to give up.”

The Country Village project was the first large housing tract approved in 1987 in Orange County under what is called a development agreement. The agreements are contracts in which the county agrees to freeze zoning and other land-use restrictions for specific developments, guaranteeing developers that they will be able to build in the future according to current plans. In return, the county gets the developer to build public facilities.

The agreement was investigated by the Orange County Grand Jury, which criticized the supervisors, saying the board had granted development rights without the land having been properly zoned. The supervisors stood firm on their earlier decision.

Another group in Laguna Niguel filed suit alleging the county had breached its contract because promised roadwork was not being done on Alicia Parkway. Staff writer Rose Ellen O’Connor contributed to this report.