MISSION VIEJO : Residents to Protest Development Plans

Homeowners from several residential neighborhoods are expected to appear before the Planning Commission today to protest plans for a 20-acre shopping center.

Residents are complaining that traffic from a six-screen movie theater and 10,000 square feet of restaurant space in the proposed Trabuco Hills Shopping Center will shatter the relative quiet of the area.

“At night around here, you can hear coyotes howling,” said Dan Lundin, former board member of the Evergreen Ridge Homeowners Assn. When the Mission Viejo Co.-owned project is built, the sound of coyotes crying in the night will be replaced by “tires squealing and people coming out of the movies,” Lundin said.

Members of two other nearby housing developments vow to appear before the commission to show their opposition to the shopping center.

The neighborhoods are supported by the Saddleback Area Coordinating Council, a citizens’ planning group that reports to the county.

In a letter sent to Mission Viejo city officials sent in late November, Jolyon Druce, a coordinating council member, said that the shopping center would “severely impact the road systems of north Mission Viejo, El Toro and Rancho Santa Margarita.”

The shopping center is proposed for a site on Santa Margarita Parkway between Marguerite Parkway and Los Alisos Boulevard.

The city staff has approved the plans, noting that measures such as construction of signal lights at key intersections will be taken to control traffic.

In a report to the Planning Commission, the city staff pointed out that a traffic study has concluded that the project would not adversely affect the streets in the area.