Council Backs Massive Orange Development

In a historic vote Tuesday, the Orange City Council endorsed a massive plan by the Irvine Co. to build 12,000 homes, a hotel and major recreational facilities over the next 20 years in the unincorporated area east of the city.

Council members voted 5 to 0 to approve the project’s environmental impact report, marking a milestone in the progress of what is a huge development even by Orange County standards. Under the development plan, the Irvine Co. proposes to dramatically reshape the face of Orange, where the current population of 106,000 would leap to nearly 150,000 by the time of the project’s completion.

Led by Mayor Don E. Smith, Orange officials have long backed the proposal, but residents have expressed reservations, citing the traffic and other problems with absorbing a massive development on the city’s eastern border.

Sherry Meddick, one of several residents who spoke against the plan Tuesday, submitted a petition to the City Council that she said bore dozens of signatures favoring rejection of the proposal.

“I think everybody is saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ The figure of 12,000 homes is just too much,” Meddick said.

The project is the largest single planned community ever attempted by the Irvine Co., according to a spokeswoman for the developer. The company, Orange County’s largest and most powerful developer, owns about a sixth of the county’s land and is currently embroiled in controversy over its proposed Laguna Laurel planned community.

But the Orange project dwarfs even Laguna Laurel, which would build 3,200 homes on 2,150 acres of land.

The East Orange development would eventually contain nearly four times as many homes and three times as much as land.

Not since the February, 1988, landmark agreement between developers and the Orange County Board of Supervisors--which ensured construction of nearly 18,000 homes in Rancho Santa Margarita, the Foothill Ranch and Dove Canyon--has such a large plan been endorsed.

The 7,110-acre East Orange development is expected to be built in four or five phases over the next 15 to 20 years.

Plans call for the development, currently outside the city limits, to be annexed as each phase is completed.

More than 12,300 housing units would be built, along with a recreation center, golf course and civic center. Two major commercial centers are expected to create 27,000 jobs.

The 11-square-mile area, running along each side of Rancho Santiago Boulevard and including Irvine Lake, would contain a hotel, four activity centers, businesses and community services surrounded by residential neighborhoods.

But the project has its detractors. At a November council hearing, about 100 residents expressed fears that it would contribute to snarled traffic in the city, and county officials have indicated their concerns as well, suggesting a slate of road improvements that they believe should accompany the development.

And the Serrano Irrigation District, which has been supplying drinking water to nearby customers for more than 50 years, has expressed alarm about the massive project.

“The easy thing for this water district is to roll over and give up the reservoir to the Irvine Co.,” said David Noyes, Serrano’s executive director. “But my gut feeling is that it is wrong.”

With 9,000 customers in Villa Park and parts of Orange, the district might be forced to import its water from the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles rather than draw from the Santiago Reservoir, more commonly known as Irvine Lake, Noyes said. The reservoir is co-owned by the water district and the Irvine Ranch Water District, which provides irrigation to agricultural customers and is not associated with the developer.

Before Tuesday night’s meeting, the water district’s board of directors had taken action authorizing a lawsuit if the City Council adopted the environmental impact report for the amendment, Noyes said.

“Originally our contention was that the Irvine Co. didn’t address water quality in its EIR (environment impact report). But it’s gone beyond that. Now they want us out of the lake so the Irvine Co. can use it as another Lake Mission Viejo. They want an aesthetic reservoir inside their development,” Noyes said.

But at a recent water district board meeting, Brad Olson, in charge of the developer’s East Orange consultant team, pressured the water district into moving from the lake, according to Noyes.

“They’re asking us to abandon a local water supply that we’ve had for nearly 60 years. This is native water. We don’t import it at all. It comes from Santiago Creek which flows in from the Cleveland National Forest,” he said.

At a City Council hearing in November, the development was criticized by some residents concerned about growth and traffic problems. But Mayor Smith and several other council members supported the proposed amendment, saying that if the measure is approved the Irvine Co.’s future plans would come under close scrutiny by city officials.

At that hearing, Smith said he understood the concerns expressed about increased growth and traffic problems. But he said he believed that “This is a good plan and it is good for the City of Orange.”

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this report.