FULLERTON : 2 City Panels Reject Coyote Hills Project

A plan for 220 homes in East Coyote Hills will be considered by the City Council next month with two strikes against it.

The city Planning Commission has voted to reject the plan for 110 houses and 110 condominium units on the northeast corner of State College Boulevard and Bastanchury Road.

The action came after the city Redevelopment Design Review Committee unanimously recommended in December that the commission deny the project.

The project, submitted by Newport Beach developer J.M. Peters Co., would pack too many houses into the hilly area and would require too much of the area to be flattened, Planning Commissioner James Blake said.

In January, during the project’s first Planning Commission hearing, Blake said he wanted more open space in the development.

Although the company did remove three units in the new plans, “I feel it is no more than a token gesture,” he said.

The plans call for condominiums to be built on graded land near the intersection of State College and Bastanchury. The homes would be constructed north, east and south of the condominiums on a lower portion of the land bordering Craig Regional Park.

The community would be private, with security gates.

Houses would sell for $500,000 and up, and condominium units would sell for $200,000 and up.

Coyote Hills, on the north end of Fullerton, contains the largest undeveloped areas left in the city. It contains mostly active and tapped-out oil and gas fields.

The city’s master plan for East Coyote Hills specifies that buildings should follow the contour of the land. But how closely buildings follow existing contours is open to interpretation, said Barry Eaton, Fullerton’s chief planner.

Eaton and other city planners had recommended that the commission approve the project.

The City Council is scheduled to consider the project March 6.