ANAHEIM : Some Resist City’s Push Eastward

In the eastern part of Anaheim, once known just as the pretty, hilly area at the outskirts of town, thousands of new homes are creating an upscale new community.

Three former ranches just south of the Riverside Freeway along Weir Canyon Road are rapidly being transformed by hundreds upon hundreds of pastel-colored homes, condominiums and apartments neatly packed into the rolling green countryside called Anaheim Hills.

Two proposed shopping centers and up to three proposed mini-malls are scheduled to follow shortly.

But the transition to a new community--with nearly 14,000 residents living in just over 5,300 dwellings--has already irked some nearby residents, who feel that they have no say in the city’s plans to carve up more sections of the countryside.

Bill Taraschi and other homeowners in a housing tract near the proposed Marketfaire at Anaheim project protested that development to the City Council recently.

“We think that doesn’t fit into our neighborhood,” he said about the proposed modernistic structure. “But it’s kind of like the answer is, ‘That’s tough.’ ”

Plans for Marketfaire and the other shopping center, Festival at Anaheim, will continue to go before the City Council in coming weeks.

“You try to do everything you can to please the residents because they’re the ones who are going to drive past it everyday,” said Councilman William D. Ehrle.

To assure residents in older, more central sections of the city that such additional developments will not infringe on existing city services, city officials have established a special tax program to ensure that those new communities pay for themselves.

“We didn’t want the rest of the citizens to have to subsidize those developments in any way,” said Greg Trombley, administrative services coordinator for the city’s engineering and public works departments.

Residents in the former ranches--now called the Highlands, Sycamore and the Summit at Anaheim--pay an annual fee for services such as roads, storm drains, parks and water tanks.

The annual fees range from $241 for an apartment to nearly $1,300 for homes, depending on the square footage and value of the dwellings, and are expected to be paid for in 20 to 25 years.

In the meantime, residents continue to move into the Sycamore and Highlands developments, and next month the Summit should be a place called home to its first new inhabitants.

Development in East Anaheim Hills Three former ranch sites are being developed into homes for about 14,000 people.