Irvine Co. Pushes Gypsum Canyon Project : Land-use: Builder lobbies for 7,966-home community in area rather than proposed jail.

A week after plans to build a county jail in Gypsum Canyon were dealt a major setback, city officials on Monday turned their attention to another idea for the canyon: development of a 7,966-home community.

The Irvine Co. presented its plans for the proposed Mountain Park community to the city Planning Commission, which will make its recommendation to the City Council. City officials, who vociferously opposed the failed Measure J, which would have allowed the county to buy the area for a jail, are now on their way to annexing the canyon to their city.

On Monday, Irvine Co. officials reiterated to planning commissioners their long-held public position that they would rather build housing in the rugged canyon than sell the property to the county, which had hoped to build both a 6,720-bed regional jail and a new landfill.

“As you know, the jail and landfill would very much like to make Gypsum Canyon their home,” said Brad Olson, president of Foothill Community Builders, a division of the Irvine Co. “We continue to disagree that a jail and a landfill are the appropriate uses here, and we feel that Mountain Park will offer many benefits to the city of Anaheim that would be lost with the jail and landfill alternative.”

But comments from a variety of environmental groups and others who spoke before the commission gave some hint that approval of the housing development may be as fraught with controversy as the debate over where to locate a new jail.

“Orange County needs 8,000 new homes built in excellent wildlife habitat about as much as Disneyland needs more customers on the Fourth of July,” said Paul Beier, a biologist and project leader of the county’s Mountain Lion Study. “Orange County needs more cars on the freeway, more pollutants in the air and another sea of red roofs like Prince William Sound needs another Exxon Valdez.”

While some environmentalists in the crowd praised the company for seeking their input during several months of negotiations in which the developer tried to win their support, some of them said the plan falls short of one they would unequivocally endorse.

And a county representative told the commissioners that there had been too little time for agencies to comment on the plan’s environmental impact report.

Kari A. Rigoni, a county regional planning chief, questioned the company’s projections on traffic the development would generate.

“We believe there is a significant underestimate of he traffic impact,” she said, reading from a letter from Environmental Management Agency director Michael Ruane.

Although Measure J, the half-cent sales tax to build a jail, was defeated at the polls by nearly a 3-to-1 margin last week, county officials said that they are still determined to find a way to obtain the property.

A bill making its way through the state Legislature and written by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), could make it easier for the county to condemn the land so it can buy it. Currently, it takes a vote of four of the five supervisors to condemn property by the process of eminent domain. But Umberg’s bill, which applies narrowly to this situation, would allow the supervisors to condemn the property with a vote of three of the five.

The bill has been approved by the Assembly, and is awaiting Senate approval.

But city officials are determined to beat the county in the race to claim Gypsum Canyon. The Planning Commission is expected to vote on the Irvine Co.’s proposal June 3. If all goes as anticipated, Mayor Fred Hunter has said, he expects that the area will be annexed to the city by the end of the year.