LAGUNA NIGUEL : Commission Rejects Hilltop Homes Plan

The Planning Commission has unanimously rejected a proposal to build 32 homes on a bluff overlooking South Laguna and the ocean.

Planning commissioners last week voted down the proposal after attorneys for landowner Jack B. Binion presented a list of 68 points disputing a city report on the project.

Commissioners sided with the city planning staff, which concluded that 32 houses will not fit comfortably on the 22-acre hilltop.

“Eventually, something will be developed up there,” said Commissioner Brian Fisk. “But until we have something that I think is the best possible plan, I will not support it.”

Binion has 30 days to appeal the decision to the City Council. Steven Long, who is one of Binion’s project designers, said Monday that their attorneys have not yet begun drafting an appeal letter.

In rejecting the proposal, the commissioners said they were most concerned that more than 150,000 cubic yards of earth would have to be removed from the site to make way for the homes. That means people living in the nearby Monarch Point community would have been forced to watch dirt-filled trucks parade past their houses every 10 minutes, eight hours a day, five days a week for at least a year.

“It has got to go right past their homes,” Fisk said. “And every truck that goes out with a load of dirt must come back and get more dirt.”

About two dozen residents from Monarch Point and South Laguna stayed past midnight to await the commission’s vote.

William Hickey, an attorney for the Monarch Point Homeowners Assn., called the dirt removal “an astounding feat” and suggested that the trucks exit through Badlands Park to the north.

The commissioners did not endorse that idea and instead recommended that the project be shrunk to fit the landscape.

“Trying to put 32 lots up there is pushing what the land will provide,” said Planning Commission Chairman Robert Healey. “I recommend that the applicant reconsider what they want to put on the hill.”

The Binion project is also the subject of litigation against the city. Most recently, Binion filed a suit against Community Development Director Bob Lenard, alleging that he has sabotaged approval of the project.