ORANGE COUNTY 1990 : Developers Aim at Final Frontiers : Housing: The county’s growth picture will be shaped by construction in untouched areas and the rebirth of cities like Huntington Beach and Brea.

To planners and developers, the 786-square-mile puzzle known as Orange County is not yet fully assembled, but all the pieces are lined up. Although the county won’t be built out for another 30 years, its final look will take shape as development reaches the region’s last frontiers in the 1990s.

* Construction may begin early next year on South County’s newest planned community, Talega Valley, a 5,000-home development with resort hotels and shopping centers in the hills and canyons behind San Clemente.

* In Orange, officials have approved an unprecedented plan by the Irvine Co. to build 12,000 homes, a hotel and a major recreational complex on the city’s eastern fringe. Despite objections from environmentalists worried about congestion and pollution creeping into nearby canyons, the first units in the mammoth 7,110-acre development could be for sale by 1993.

* The last big undeveloped stretch of Orange County coast will be altered by a fleet of bulldozers carving ocean view home sites out of the gently sloping foothills. About 2,600 homes, many of them in the million-dollar category, are planned for the Irvine Coast between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach.

Harder to spot, but equally important to the growth picture in the ‘90s, will be the rebirth of cities like Huntington Beach and Brea, areas that have been the focus of aggressive redevelopment drives overshadowed by South County’s dramatic changes.

It all adds up to more people, more cars and more demands on county and municipal services in the next decade, forcing civic leaders to confront new complexities in such areas as transportation, family services, law enforcement, health care and education. This breakneck pace of development disturbs San Juan Capistrano rancher Tom Rogers. One of the county’s principal slow-growth advocates, Rogers foresees no end to the trend of high-density projects, despite a critical shortage of roads and services, particularly in South County.

“This county is a ticking time bomb,” warned Rogers, a leading proponent of a sweeping slow-growth measure defeated by voters in November, 1988. “Even if no more development entitlements are issued in the ‘90s, we’ve got a serious mess on our hands.”

Rogers blamed the situation on rapid-fire approval of development agreements establishing the maximum size of projects in the final months before the vote on the slow-growth initiative. “That hysterical granting of entitlements immediately prior to the election laid the seeds for self-destruction in the 1990s,” Rogers said. “Now the developers have their approvals and we’ve got only promises for more roads and services. It’s a bad deal.”

County planners disagree, saying they’ve learned significant lessons from past practices and that developments such as East Orange and Aliso Viejo in South County reflect a more enlightened approach.

Rather than build strictly bedroom communities, developers are being required to locate employment centers nearby to reduce traffic on freeways. For example, business parks in the proposed East Orange development are expected to create 26,000 jobs by early next century.

Open space, more than ever, will be a hotly debated component in future developments. As public demand for parklands mounted in the 1980s, developers had to deed an average of 50% of the land proposed for development to the county for parks or recreational uses in exchange for project approvals.

The result appears to be a windfall of land for county park officials. Tradeoffs with developers are expected to double the county’s current 19,000 acres of regional parkland in the coming decade as half a dozen new preserves are dedicated.

Irvine Co. officials boast that their showy coastal development south of Corona del Mar will stand as a benchmark for blending open space and residential construction. About 75% of the 9,432-acre project will be left in its natural state or transformed into greenbelts, including the entire coast on the ocean side of Coast Highway.

“It is a model on how to deal with an ecologically sensitive piece of land,” said Ray Watson, vice chairman of the Irvine Co. “It represents a compromise, something you’re going to see more of in this county when it comes to development.”

Developers may be more conciliatory because many county residents are openly frustrated with traffic and density. Officials, developers and environmentalists point to the massive October rally against the Irvine Co.’s 3,200-home Laguna Laurel project in Laguna Canyon as evidence of a new grass-roots movement.

“It has reached even the highest income levels,” said Tom Pratt, environmental director of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group that monitors coastal development. “People work 50 hours a week to have a nice home, a nice car and a nice family only to see the air get more polluted, the roads get more congested and find no parking when they go to the beach. They are fed up, and developers will get the message.”

With land values soaring, and the amount of available real estate nearly exhausted, older cities in central and North County are likely to turn to redevelopment in growing numbers to capitalize on the county’s popularity as a business and retail center.

“Possibly the most dynamic changes in the ‘90s may occur in North County, in places like Brea,” said Kenneth R. Smith, transportation director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency.

Sitting along the Orange Freeway, just a few miles south of densely settled San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County, Brea is blessed geographically. It plans to capitalize on that by spending millions to redevelop its downtown shopping district and attract new companies.

“We’ve even got plans to landscape the banks of the flood control channel that runs through town and use its natural configuration to hold outdoor concerts in the summer,” said Brea Councilman Wayne D. Wedin. “South County may get all the ink. But things are happening here too.”

* STORIES: A look at what to expect in the next decade for Orange County families, crime, health and education. B2,B3