O.C. Readies for Building Surge : Construction: Developers recently have won approval for projects that include as many as 21,000 new homes, many slated for environmentally sensitive areas.
Orange County stands on the verge of an extraordinary new burst of home building, with projects moving forward in recent months that could earmark as many as 21,000 units for construction in the coming decade.
Never mind that recession and tight-fisted banks have depressed the building industry from coast to coast. Never mind that new projects in Orange County increasingly are slated for environmentally sensitive land and face better-organized slow-growth opposition.
Three major development proposals moved ahead last week, while two others cleared important hurdles this fall. If they all stay on track in an uncertain economy, the projects could mean construction of massive developments throughout the county.
“That would be a huge amount of development anywhere, even in Orange County, which is one of the country’s most prolific areas,” said Sanford R. Goodkin, an international real estate analyst based in Southern California. “People tend to think that 21,000 homes will be built tomorrow morning, and that’s just not true. But the numbers still are amazing.”
Backers say the projects will open Orange County’s housing market to people of more modest incomes by dramatically expanding the county’s moderately priced housing stock. Also, the new developments will give residents a chance to live closer to their jobs, supporters say, and therefore commute less.
Critics are dubious: They warn of increased traffic congestion and air pollution, along with dwindling open space as new projects gobble up chunks of land in environmentally sensitive areas.
But while the two sides disagree on the merits of the new development, they find common ground on at least one point: Together, the five projects--along with others already under way and countless smaller ones in the works--could lay the foundation for a dramatically different Orange County by the turn of the century.
The five major projects:
* The Las Flores Planned Community, a 2,500-unit development to be built by the Santa Margarita Co. east of Mission Viejo.
* Westpark II, an Irvine Co. project that Irvine voters narrowly approved last week, authorizing 3,850 more homes near the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.
* The Foothill/Trabuco Specific Plan, which has won county Planning Commission approval and would authorize construction of about 2,600 new homes in southeastern Orange County.
* The Bolsa Chica development by the Koll Co., which would expand a sensitive wetland in return for permission to build 4,884 homes in Huntington Beach.
* The Mountain Park project, a massive, 8,000-unit Irvine Co. community slated for Gypsum Canyon, on Anaheim’s eastern border.
In addition, a number of other developments are either under way or nearing completion: The meadows to the east of the city of Orange already are teeming with thousands of houses; the land along the Newport Coast is being built out, as is the real-estate-rich plain east of Mission Viejo, where Coto de Caza, Robinson Ranch and Dove Canyon all have sprung up in recent years.
According to Research Network Ltd., a local marketing research and real estate economics consulting firm, buyers purchased 13,800 new homes in Orange County in 1987, but that number has dropped off in recent years. In 1991, the firm predicts that fewer than 7,000 new homes are likely to be bought.
Not all of the homes laid out in the new projects will be built in the coming four or five years. Many will wait for the economy to improve, and some of the projects may be whittled down before they actually break ground. But each has received at least preliminary approval.
“It’s really depressing for anyone who wants to continue to live here, as opposed to someone who just wants to make money here on land development,” said Ray Chandos, a local environmentalist who actively tracks many development projects. “All of this adds up to a degradation of the quality of life that we have in Orange County.”
Other environmental activists agree.
“This is a continual problem,” said Dave Bramlet, a consulting biologist who lives in Santa Ana. “You have this shrinking of open space area throughout the county, and there’s a lack of an overall picture of what all these projects will do.”
Developers and real estate experts, however, are focused on a different picture, and they come to a different conclusion: They see the county’s soaring demand for housing and the thousands of commuters forced to the highways every morning because they work in Orange County but cannot afford to live here.
“If not a single one of those new homes was built, you’d still have traffic, congestion and smog,” said Lucy Dunn, senior vice president of the Koll Co. “There’s a jobs/housing imbalance, and we need to address that. . . . The market is dictating what we need here, and you’ve got builders hungry to meet that demand.”
Like Dunn, many developers agree that the new projects are likely to include a healthy dose of moderately priced housing, if only because that is what is now in short supply.
At the Santa Margarita Co., spokeswoman Diane Gaynor noted that 25% of that company’s Las Flores project is devoted to affordable housing. More than half of the project’s units will be offered for under $250,000, she said--relatively affordable by Orange County standards.
“The community has been created to provide a wide range of housing types and styles to meet the needs of Orange County residents,” Gaynor said. “That includes the provision of entry-level housing.”
Moreover, construction of the Las Flores project is tied to completion of certain roads, so company officials argue that their new houses will not add to the region’s traffic, but will be absorbed by the roads that serve it.
“These projects have all been through serious hoops,” said Christine Diemer, executive director of the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Assn. “There always has been mitigation to deal with environmental issues, and I think you’re seeing even more attention paid to those concerns these days.”
What heightens those environmental concerns today are the areas where many of the new projects are being built. No longer is Orange County development concentrated almost exclusively on old agricultural land. The bean fields and orange orchards almost all have long since fallen to housing developments.
What’s left is increasingly sensitive land--canyons, coastal scrub areas and the like--a fact that has added new vigor to the environmental battles over proposed projects.
“We’ve built into the hinterlands,” said Matt Disston, a principal with Research Network Ltd. “There’s not a lot of easy land left. We’ve built out further and further into the area that is more fragile.”
Developers say that’s made them more careful. Plans are more scrupulously reviewed by builders and planning agencies, and houses are meticulously built to minimize the destruction of natural habitats, they say. Large percentages of proposed developments are set aside as open space--roughly 60% of both Las Flores and Mountain Park, for instance--a concession that builders say has made their projects more expensive but has helped to protect the environment.
In Bolsa Chica, the Koll Co. has labored for years with local government leaders to come up with a plan that lets the firm build houses while still protecting and even expanding the delicate wetlands nearby. Their agreement has won tentative backing from many of the key players, but it’s taken years, and some environmentalists and community activists remain opposed.
“Rationality has gone out the window,” said Ralph Bauer, spokesman for CoOp for Bolsa Chica, a coalition of Huntington Beach groups opposed to the Koll Co. project. “We’re seeing a headlong plunge to put as many houses as possible on every acre of land in the county.”
Likewise, the Mountain Park development in Gypsum Canyon has been sued by the Friends of the Tecate cypress, which argues that the project will destroy much of the native habitat for Tecate cypress.
On a few points, environmentalists and developers have few disagreements: Environmental groups praise the notion of building homes closer to workplaces so that fewer people will commute, and they commend the idea of building lower-priced housing so that more people can afford to buy. But many of them say that they have yet to see those promises kept.
“Let’s look at the reality,” said Pete DiSimone, manager of the Audubon Society’s Starr Ranch sanctuary. “These ideas look good on paper, but they don’t work.”
Citing overcrowded schools, traffic-snarled roads and ever-increasing demand for scarce water, DiSimone said he does not believe that more development is the right solution. Even areas like Rancho Santa Margarita, which were intended to combine housing and industry so that residents could avoid the freeways, have fallen short of their promise, according to DiSimone and other critics.
Stephen Nordeck, chairman of the Orange County Planning Commission, agrees that some past developments have not worked out in the county’s best interests. But he said more intense and sophisticated analysis of projects has helped make the current batch, at least those reviewed by his commission, more acceptable to both sides.
“Development is OK if it’s done properly,” Nordeck said. “Some of it’s been done improperly, but we’ve made an effort to learn from the mistakes.”
A New Housing Boom
Several major housing developments from Huntington Beach to Trabuco Canyon have cleared important hurdles this month, laying the foundation for another major housing surge in the mid-1990s. Together with the Las Flores project, where preliminary work began this fall, they add to up to another 21,000 homes to be built.
A. Foothill/Trabuco Specific Plan
Homes: 2,600 units.
Location: Southeast Orange County in Trabuco Canyon area.
Status: Cleared the County Planning Commission after more than three years of review; awaiting action next month by county supervisors.
B. Westpark II
Homes: 3,850 units.
Location: Irvine, near Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.
Status: Narrowly approved by Irvine voters last week.
C. Mountain Park
Homes: 8,000 units.
Location: Gypsum Canyon, on Anaheim’s eastern border.
Status: Approved last week by Anaheim City Council and the Local Agency Formation Commission.
D. Las Flores Planned Community
Homes: 2,500 units.
Location: Foothills east of Mission Viejo.
Status: Approved by the Board of Supervisors in December; a court this fall cleared the way for land preparation.
E. Bolsa Chica
Homes: 4,884 units.
Location: Near Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach.
Status: Development plans unveiled last week, with key support from Huntington Beach City Council members.
SOURCE: Developers, city and county planning agencies
