SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Franciscan Plaza Addition Approved

Despite impassioned pleas by members of a downtown preservationist group, the City Council this week approved an addition to the controversial Franciscan Plaza project.

By a 4-1 vote, the council said the city would benefit from construction of the 18,000-square-foot, three-story building on Camino Capistrano. The construction site is less than two blocks from Mission San Juan Capistrano and will be located amid the most colorful and oldest part of this historic city.

At 32 feet, the building is seven feet taller than city rules allow, but the council granted developer Paul Farber a variance. The Planning Commission had rejected the variance, and Farber had appealed.

“The real issue is to do what’s right and sometimes that’s not a matter of black and white,” Mayor Gary Hausdorfer said. “Politically, I think sometimes it takes more guts to say yes. I’m not about to support some 30-foot height limitation to make someone happy. The issue here isn’t growth or no growth, it’s about change and how we handle the changes.”

The council’s vote paved the way for Farber to finish his $17-million commercial plaza, a project that has divided the loyalties in this historic town. Two years ago a group of town preservationists opposed to the plaza formed the Friends of Historic San Juan Capistrano to oppose the development. Members of the group picketed the first phase’s grand opening party in December.

“If it were not for being housed one and a half blocks from the mission, it would be a wonderful addition to the city,” said Mark Clancey, the group’s spokesman. “However, we believe the project is too intensive for the downtown of the city.”

Phase two of the Franciscan Plaza proposes a restaurant, retail and office space on a half-acre parcel. Part of the project calls for the restoration of the 19th-Century Avila Adobe, which would become the restaurant.

The first phase, which was completed in December, includes a shopping plaza, five movie theaters, an outdoor escalator and a multilevel parking structure on two acres at the corner of Camino Capistrano and Verdugo Street.

The council Tuesday also instructed Farber to come up with a solution for lighting problems in the project’s parking structure that have drawn complaints from some residents of the neighboring Los Rios Historic District, just across the railroad tracks.

While Farber’s project rattled local preservationists, it won the support of mission officials, who sent a letter on the project’s behalf to Hausdorfer.

“We supported the Franciscan Plaza because the concept of small shops in downtown San Juan Capistrano is what all parties in this city have been looking for in the past five years,” said Brian McInerney, mission spokesman.

“It’s the small mom-and-pop shops, which the plaza has addressed, that give the city a small-town atmosphere. And smaller shop owners are the ones who get involved in the city.”

Artifacts dating back to the 1800s were found during the plaza’s excavation, including the foundation of the former Valenzuela family adobe, believed to date back to the early 1880s, and foundations to the Juan Avila adobe, built in the 1840s and destroyed by fire in 1879.

The archeological finds delayed the project nine months and cost Farber $379,047, of which the city has promised to reimburse him $277,365.

The group, which is also fighting the Historic Town Center project in a neighboring section of downtown, is lobbying for a less dense, less commercialized redevelopment of the downtown area.