IRVINE : Hearing Tonight on Barranca Extension

Residents will get a chance to comment tonight on the proposed route of Barranca Parkway’s missing link.

The City Council will hold a public hearing during its 6:30 p.m. session to consider building a new one-mile stretch of Barranca Parkway between Jeffrey Road and Sand Canyon Avenue. The new road would make Barranca Parkway one complete stretch through the city.

The council will consider several alternative routes for the proposed road. The city Transportation and Planning commissions, in recommending the road project, favored an alignment that would slightly bend the road away from homes in the Orangetree community but slice off a section of wildlife habitat along the San Diego Creek channel.

Residents of the Orangetree community to the north of the proposed extension worked with the city and the Irvine Co. to propose that the road be lowered by about four feet and that a four-foot landscaped berm be built from Sand Canyon Avenue to a wildlife habitat close to Jeffrey Road. The Irvine Co. also agreed to plant eucalyptus trees between the road and the creek.

During commission hearings on the road project, Orangetree residents said they were afraid that the road would add too much noise and be a visual blight to the area. Several residents also testified that they did not want the road because it would destroy an open-space wildlife area that has been a valuable asset in a community without parks.

Part of the proposed project includes major work on the creek to alter its course and improve the channel’s flood-control ability. The two city commissions favor a concrete, terraced channel proposed by city planners that would move the creek to the south, away from the proposed road.

In a letter to the city, the state Department of Fish and Game said it would rather see a more natural creek bed. The department also said it intends to require that the city replace any sensitive habitat lost to the road and creek projects.

City planners estimate that 10.7 acres of riparian habitat and four acres of habitat usable by the endangered least Bell’s vireo will be lost in the preferred roadway alignment. Planners want to build the road to alleviate traffic congestion on the parallel Irvine Center Drive and Alton Parkway and to prepare for the eventual development of the area.

The surrounding vacant land is owned by the Irvine Co., which plans to seek permission for residential, commercial and industrial developments. Future residents and business owners in the area will probably pay for the $2.7-million road and the $24.8-million creek project through a property tax district.