New Communities : Giant Moreno Valley Project Opens : Planned Community: The $1.5-billion project will have 11,000 housing units. It will also be the site of the Moreno Valley campus of Riverside Community College.

Moreno Valley Ranch, a $1.5-billion, 4,000-acre planned community that will eventually have 11,000 housing units, opens today in Riverside County’s second-largest city.

More than seven years in planning and development by the Warmington Co. of Costa Mesa, the project in Moreno Valley features a 35-acre lake with a 5 1/2-acre recreation center, with a pool, spa, sport courts and a 4,000-square-foot clubhouse; a 27-hole public golf course designed by Pete Dye and developed by Landmark Land Co.; three elementary schools, a junior high school and a high school.

Moreno Valley Ranch is also the site of the new 132-acre Moreno Valley campus of Riverside Community College, scheduled to open in the spring of 1991.

Besides the golf course and artificial lake, residents of Moreno Valley Ranch will also have access to the 1,800-acre Lake Perris State Recreation Area on the community’s southern border.

Warmington will develop 58 acres of public parks throughout eight sites in the community. The city last week approved a 31-acre, lighted, three-park sports complex that will be the largest in Moreno Valley. More than 1,700 acres have been set aside as parks or open space, according to Jeff Kudlac, Warmington’s director of land development.

He said the lake will serve as part of the community’s flood control system, as well as the development’s aesthetic and recreational needs. Moreno Valley Ranch is 4 miles south of the Pomona (60) Freeway and 6 miles east of Interstate 215.

About 50 acres of the community will be zoned commercial and retail, with 298,000 square feet of buildings, including a “village core” at Iris Avenue and Lasselle Street, north of the lake, Kudlac said.

Moreno Valley Ranch is being built on the old Wolfskill Ranch, purchased by Warmington in 1983, a year before Moreno Valley was incorporated as a city.

Thirty-one model homes from nine Southland home builders open today, with a first phase of 1,546 single-family houses ranging in size from 1,512 to 2,850 square feet and with base prices starting from $142,900 to $236,990, according to Joe Kepner, Warmington’s director of marketing. The models will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Houses are designed in Spanish Colonial and Spanish Monterey architecture, he said, adding that the landscape plan features plants and trees indigenous to California.

Projects opening today include Carlan Homes at Moreno Valley Ranch, Montego at Moreno Valley by Awdeh California Inc., Quinta del Lago by John Laing Homes, Pennfield Lakes by Pennfield Development, Alamosa by the Manning Co., Montelena by Thompson Investment Co., Marlborough Pointe by Marlborough Development Corp., the Palisades by Inland Pacific Communities Inc. and California Manor by Kaufman & Broad.

Moreno Valley has grown in 10 years from a small collection of rural communities--Sunnymead, Edgemont and Moreno--with about 22,000 people to its present size of about 110,000, according to Jeff Meyers of the Meyers Group, an Encino-based real estate research and consulting group.

Meyers said the city is changing from a bedroom community of first-time home buyers who work in Orange and Los Angeles counties to a move-up community with a local employment base “that is attracting an increasing number of business and firms . . . fueling new local job growth that is attracting new residents . . . for reasons other than low single-family home prices.”

March Air Force Base is a major employer in Moreno Valley, with about 1,500 civilian employees, Meyers said. The closure of nearby Norton and George Air Force bases is expected to add another 6,000 military and civilian employees to the March facility, contributing to growth in Moreno Valley and Riverside, he said.

More than 600,000 square feet of retail space has been constructed recently, Meyers said, with an average of 448,000 square feet of new retail space to be occupied each year. This retail development will create an average of 1,120 new retail jobs a year in Moreno Valley, Meyers said.

Two major developments that will generate a substantial number of jobs over the next five to seven years in Moreno Valley are Canyon Springs at the intersection of the Pomona (60) and 215 freeways and the Towngate development on the former site of the Riverside International Raceway, he added.

Canyon Springs will consist of a 400-acre mixed-use business part and a 500-acre industrial/office business park. Canyon springs will include a 1.6-million square foot regional shopping mall, directly competing with an 87-acre regional mall planned for the Towngate site. Towngate will also have 236 acres of mixed-use commercial development, Meyers said.