MISSION VIEJO : 45-Day Moratorium Voted on Building

The competition for control of land heated up Tuesday, as the City Council passed a 45-day building moratorium.

Just a handful of projects will be affected. The council will meet again in January to consider extending the freeze for a year--a move that would stall at least one major development planned by the Mission Viejo Co.

The ordinance passed, 4 to 1, with Councilwoman Sharon Cody dissenting.

The moratorium is the latest move in a series of confrontations over land-use between the city and the Mission Viejo Co., the developer and major landholder of this planned community of 75,000 people.

The developer sued the city last month over the city’s newly enacted General Plan, which designates as open space several parcels marked for construction in a 1988 development agreement between the county and the company.

“Things are real chaotic at present,” Planning Commissioner Joseph Lowe told the council. “We need a timeout to take in a breath.”

Councilman Robert D. Breton said the urgency ordinance is needed right away to combat worsening traffic. “A factual basis for a moratorium is right out there on the streets,” he said.

But Cody said the ordinance needed to be supported with hard facts before she could support it.

“We’ve all been out there” on the streets, she said. “But I haven’t heard but a half-dozen words on the specifics. I don’t want to go in with something that is half-baked.”

The company has maintained that the development agreement prohibits any building moratoriums.

A yearlong moratorium might affect company plans for a large-scale commercial development and hotel-restaurant complex, a company officials said.

The council also unanimously agreed to look into challenging the development agreement, instructing City Atty. Douglas C. Holland to study it.

Last year, with three different council members in power, the council declined to take any legal action to overturn the development agreement, which was signed by county officials just days before the city’s incorporation.