Planning Staff Backs Project Over Warnings of Consultants : Development: The plan for a 2,500-home community next to a wilderness area would disrupt wildlife, report found. The staff decides the need for affordable housing is more important.

Although their own consultants warn that one of Southern California’s richest natural habitats could be destroyed if a 2,500-home community is built on the edge of O’Neill Regional Park, county planning staffers Tuesday recommended approval of the project.

Officials with the Environmental Management Agency told the County Planning Commission that the Santa Margarita Co.’s proposed Las Flores Planned Community, covering 1,000 acres just south of Rancho Santa Margarita, would provide affordable housing to first-time home buyers.

That benefit, planning staffers contended, outweighs the potential environmental dangers to the park’s Arroyo Trabuco, a lush creek-bed canyon that is home to the county’s dwindling deer population, more than 60 varieties of birds and the largest oak and sycamore forest in the region.

Planning commissioners are expected to approve the project on Oct. 23, and send the issue to the Board of Supervisors for final consideration.

At Tuesday’s commission hearing, Planning Director Thomas Mathews put in a personal appearance to advise against a “hard-line” or “literal interpretation” of the consultants’ report, which was issued Friday.

That report said the project would pollute and damage the arroyo unless it is moved several hundred feet farther from the canyon edge.

Mathews recommended no increase in the buffer area surrounding the arroyo. But no one attended the meeting from the county division of Harbors, Beaches and Parks--the agency that commissioned the consultants’ report. Noting that his staff is recommending other concessions from the developer, Mathews said he believed that Harbors, Beaches and Parks officials are now satisfied with the project.

“It is the job of the planning department to bring forward a reasoned, balanced project . . . “ Mathews said, “understanding that no project will ever be 100% perfect but, in fact, represents a compromise.”

Planning Commissioner C. Douglas Leavenworth appeared miffed by the response, however, telling Mathews that he expected to hear directly from those officials charged with protecting public parks.

“I want to know why Bob Fisher or Eric Jessen (of Harbors, Beaches and Parks) weren’t here today,” Leavenworth said. “I think we should have been talking to the parks people. I look forward to hearing a statement from them. . . . I still think we ought to at least get a memo.”

Commissioner Thomas Moody challenged the staff’s contention that Las Flores’ economic benefits--principally more affordable housing--would outweigh the environmental impacts of the project.

The Santa Margarita Co. has promised that more than half of its houses would sell for under $200,000; the average new home in the county now sells for about $250,000.

Moody contended that many residents still could not afford houses at those prices. He argued that the company should be required to guarantee that half of the housings units--be they apartments, condominiums or single-family homes--be affordable to families with incomes at or below the county average at the time they are put on the market.

Under the staff’s proposed conditions for approval, the developer would be required to guarantee that at least one-quarter of the housing units be affordable to the average wage earner. But Moody said the county needs more.

“This is a hell of a time to be asking for an extra 2,500 units,” Moody said, noting that Las Flores would add more traffic to already clogged South County highways at a time when residents countywide are reluctant to raise taxes for new roads.

“People are fed up with the development that’s going on right now,” Moody said, “and you’re not providing us with anything of extra public benefit.”

As envisioned by the developer, Las Flores would provide a blend of houses, condos and apartments, along with schools, parks and job sites. Santa Margarita executives believe that more than half of the units will ultimately be affordable to average wage earners, but don’t want to promise that in light of the changing economy.

Under the staff recommendations presented Tuesday, Santa Margarita would be required to eliminate or relocate 91 homes on the southern end of the project in order to enlarge a corridor used by animals crossing from the arroyo to other wilderness areas. A 3-acre community park now proposed next to the arroyo would also have to be moved, under the staff’s recommendations.

According to the consultants’ report issued Friday, the project as envisioned would leave at most a buffer of 200 feet of natural habitat and an additional 100 feet of transition area between the arroyo and the development.

The consultants’ report concludes that a buffer of at least 400 feet of natural open space is needed to protect deer while 400 to 800 feet is needed to protect birds, including the California gnatcatcher, which is being considered for protection as an endangered species.

“The report is now a part of the official record,” Ray Chandos, a representative of the Rural Canyons Conservation Fund, argued to the commission. “It can’t just be swept under the rug.”

But planning staffers contended in a 12-page written summary of their findings that, despite the consultants’ study, no precise amount of buffer will protect the arroyo.

The staff considered recommending that the developer be required to build fewer homes and move farther back from the wilderness area but decided against that alternative, according to the staff summary.

If the developer were required to build fewer homes, the costs of roads and other public amenities would have to be borne by fewer homeowners, the staff report said. Thus, the houses would have to be priced higher to cover the developer’s costs.

“There is a difference of opinion between experts in this matter,” the staff report says of the disputed buffer area.

“There is probably no doubt that more open-space acreage increases the opportunity for wildlife. However, there is not sufficient evidence that the increase would offset the loss of habitat or wildlife attributed to the project.”