MISSION VIEJO : Home Depot OKd Despite Sign-Waving

Over the protests of about 175 sign-waving, angry residents, the Planning Commission has approved a Home Depot store that is expected to bring the city up to $600,000 annually in sales tax revenues.

The 120,000-square-foot center at Crown Valley and Marguerite parkways will be located close to about 450 dwellings. Homeowners complained bitterly against the project, saying resulting traffic would shatter their quiet neighborhoods and reduce property values.

“The way we look at it, this is our home,” said resident Vincent Ferraro. “It’s going to disrupt our quality of life. That’s the bottom line.”

But commissioners at Monday night’s meeting said that the project met all legal zoning requirements and that they had no choice but to approve the store, which company officials predict will bring in $38 million during its first year.

“Unless some new or different information came up during the meeting, I knew (the residents) were going to leave unhappy,” said Sherri Butterfield, Planning Commission chairwoman. “If we had put a stop to that development, we would have opened up (the city) to a lawsuit.”

Residents said the land had been originally zoned for housing. They also disputed traffic studies that have been done for the project.

Some homeowners visited other Home Depot stores and conducted their own traffic counts, coming up with much larger figures than produced by the studies commissioned by the Mission Viejo Co., owners of the 9.7-acre parcel.

City officials and representatives of the Mission Viejo Co. said the property had always been intended for high-density use. Wayne Peterson, a Mission Viejo Co. vice president, said that six traffic studies have looked at traffic flow by the proposed garden center and that his firm stands by them.

Tuesday evening , the Highland Park Homeowners Assn. board was scheduled to discuss whether to appeal the decision to the City Council. The Hillcrest Community Assn. will deal with the same issue tonight.