LAGUNA HILLS : Businessmen Fight Oso Parkway Name

In a battle between old and new community identities, an alliance of Aliso Viejo business owners has filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent Laguna Hills from giving back to a stretch of Pacific Park Drive its original name of Oso Parkway.

Members of the Pacific Park Alliance, an organization of businesses in Aliso Viejo’s 1,200-acre Pacific Park center, say they fear that the street name change within the Laguna Hills city limits from Interstate 5 to Moulton Parkway will hurt business. Pacific Park Drive eventually will extend west all the way to the commercial center, which will employ 27,000 people when fully developed.

“We are a development that’s not located off a freeway at this point,” said Michael Siegel, owner of Loan Link Financial Services and a board member with the alliance. “Our biggest problem is community identification. We are 10 years old, we have 150 businesses, we have 5,000 employees. We’ve got United Parcel, we’ve got Armor All, we’ve got Pepsi, but we don’t have identity.”

Laguna Hills officials say the name change is important to retaining the city’s historical identity. City Atty. Lois Jeffrey said the city planned on changing the street signs to say Oso Parkway on Monday but has held off pending the outcome of a court hearing in Orange County Superior Court this morning.

“Our position is that the city acted properly within its discretion and the lawsuit has no merit,” she said.

In the lawsuit, filed last week, the business owners allege that the name change violates a county highway plan and a state environmental law, that it was made without proper public notice and was done to “spite and harm” the Mission Viejo Co., the developer of Aliso Viejo and the Pacific Park.

Laguna Hills officials are embroiled in a dispute with Mission Viejo and the Mission Viejo Co. over the development of a parcel of land near Interstate 5, said Richard Spence Wordes, the attorney representing the business owners.

The Mission Viejo Co. initially asked the County Board of Supervisors to change the street name from Oso Parkway to Pacific Park Drive in 1986, Wordes said.

Laguna Hills resident Rodika Gurgescu also joined the lawsuit, claiming that the name change is a waste of taxpayer’s money, Wordes said. The cost to change signs along the street is about $9,000, and it could cost between $20,000 and $40,000 to change the freeway signs, Wordes said.

Almost every street in the city is named after local pioneers or reflects the region’s Spanish heritage, Laguna Hills Mayor Melody Carruth said.

“In 1986, this community of Laguna Hills fought very hard to retain the name Oso Parkway,” she said. “It was quite clear people felt very strongly that the community should retain its historical heritage.”

According to local lore, Oso Parkway, along with El Toro and La Paz roads, were named to commemorate the end of staged fights between bears and bulls around the turn of the century, Laguna Hills Councilman Joel T. Lautenschleger said. In Spanish, toro means bull, oso means bear, and paz means peace.

In the late 1880s, settlers in the large haciendas of the area staged fights between bulls and bears during the annual summer fiestas. But the settlers around the turn of the century decided that the fighting “was a little too mean, so they wanted to have some sort of peaceful event,” Lautenschleger said. “They stopped and they called a peace between the bears and the bulls.”