MISSION VIEJO : Curtis’ Civic Center Voter Plan Rejected

At odds with the majority of the City Council in recent weeks over the future site of a civic center complex, Councilman Robert A. Curtis was thwarted again by his peers when he failed to persuade them to let voters decide the issue.

Curtis proposed an advisory election on the November ballot that would allow public input on several future City Hall sites under consideration by the council.

His motion failed to receive a second at Monday’s council meeting, and Councilman Norman Murray criticized the action as premature.

“We need some narrowing down (of options) and time to educate ourselves,” Murray said. “I’m having problems with putting three or four items in front of the voters.”

Curtis has been urging the council to accept a deal with the Mission Viejo Co. that would grant city approval for two large-scale housing and commercial-development projects in exchange for a seven-acre City Hall site near Crown Valley Parkway and Interstate 5.

Independently of the council, Curtis negotiated the agreement last month with Mission Viejo Co. President Jim Gilleran, a move that several council members have privately criticized as political grandstanding.

Other council members have focused on eight acres of commercial land owned by the Mission Viejo Co. as an alternate site.

The site, at Chrisanta Drive near La Paz Road, includes the Mission Viejo Co. headquarters and an Edwards Theatre outlet and is across the street from a two-story office building that the council voted to purchase last month.

That $3.1-million office building and a surrounding two-acre parcel on Chrisanta Drive are in a 90-day escrow. The property is owned by Viejo Ltd., a San Francisco-based family partnership.

Council members have said that purchase of this entire area would allow them to create an expanded, centrally located civic center.

Curtis has opposed these plans, contending that the Mission Viejo Co.’s proposed seven-acre parcel would allow the city to build a civic center from scratch, rather than using existing buildings on Chrisanta that were mostly built in the 1970s.

Over Curtis’ objections, the council last month appointed a committee to negotiate with Mission Viejo Co. officials for the eight-acre Chrisanta parcel. On Monday, the council also voted to pay a consultant $15,000 for a 60-day study, presenting financial options on three other civic center sites.