ORANGE : Council Is Urged to Preserve Creek Site

Wearing bright yellow “Save Santiago Creek” buttons, more than 150 residents applauded a presentation to the City Council suggesting that a 37-acre stretch along the creek be preserved as open space.

At the Tuesday council meeting, Urban Edges, a Denver-based consulting firm hired by the city, presented two plans for preserving as much space as possible around Santiago Creek between Tustin and Cambridge streets.

With those plans, the council intends to seek grant money, possibly from state or private agencies, to improve the area and acquire land there, planning director Jack McGee said.

Portions of that area are currently owned by the city, the county and the William Lyon Co. development firm. Last year, the council unanimously rejected a large development project there proposed by a Burnett-Ehrline/William Lyon Co. partnership.

The first plan proposed by Urban Edges representatives suggests that the area, which includes a former golf course, be preserved as open space and that parts of it be adapted as recreational fields. The plan would allow for a small commercial development at the southeast corner of the site to offset the cost of acquiring and improving the land. City documents show the plan would cost about $9.5 million.

A second suggestion was to allow as many as 45 single-family homes on the northeast portion of the former golf course and to add several recreational fields and two acres of commercial development at the southwest corner of the site. That plan would cost about $4 million.

After the 30-minute presentation, proponents of a “greenway,” a strip of natural open space, encouraged the council to implement plans resembling the first proposal.

“The developer has his vision, but the neighbors have an alternative. I think what we want is that plan right before you,” said Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance member Michael Hennessey, prompting a burst of applause from the audience. “The council absolutely has to take charge. Not to act will be a decision.”

Howard Decruyenaere, president of the Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance, agreed. “That’s the type of land that has so much potential,” he said. “Future residents won’t have another chance to get more open space.”

He added that the city needs to make a long-term commitment to preserving open space. “Without a policy, anything we do to this parcel will be a weak, weak foundation,” he said.

Decruyenaere, 31, said he wants to save the creek, in which he caught tadpoles as a child, so that “my son, when I get married, has a beautiful creek that has been treated with respect.”