SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Council OKs Plan to Move, Widen Road

The City Council disappointed a packed audience at City Hall by endorsing a plan to move Rancho Viejo Road east and widen it to four lanes, affecting several landowners and a Montessori school.

After four hours of debate, the council voted 3 to 1 Tuesday night to support the project, which is needed for the Interstate 5 interchange and the future $850-million San Joaquin Hills tollway. Councilman Gary L. Hausdorfer was absent. The dissenting vote came from Councilman Jeff Vasquez.

Councilwoman Carolyn Nash called her decision “a very, very difficult vote to make,” but said there was little the city could do now to change the tollway alignment. The approval allows the city to request landscaping for sound walls in the project and to get bike and equestrian trails, all paid for by the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, the tollway’s builder.

“This plan makes the best of a bad situation,” Nash said. “If we didn’t approve it, we would have lost control of any design elements of that road.”

For the past year, Save Our San Juan, a grass-roots community group, has fervently fought the plan, claiming it will destroy the tranquillity of the rural neighborhoods on the east side of the freeway.

The SOS group, which has more than 100 members--mostly residents of the Village San Juan, Country Hills, Mission Hills and Spotted Bull neighborhoods--has lobbied unsuccessfully to have the interchange moved north on Interstate 5 toward Crown Valley Parkway and away from their homes.

On Tuesday, the group asked the council to reject the plan for Rancho Viejo Road and help it get a new environmental impact report from the TCA. But most of the SOS members left the meeting unhappy.

“There is a tremendous amount of frustration,” said Bob Spence, a teacher who is a six-year resident in the Mission Hills community. “I’m sure we’re not done with this, but I don’t know what our next step is. . . . We feel like the council is not there to serve the people.”

Spence said new environmental documents should be produced because the TCA has changed the plan in the area so many times.

“Originally they said they were going to move the road 70 feet (toward our homes) and now it’s 190 feet,” Spence said. “They are going to absolutely destroy 34 homes in our community.”

Councilman Gil Jones said city staff will watch the process carefully, particularly during the permit stage, to see if the TCA exceeds its original design.

“I think we did the best we could to get the best for the city at this point,” Jones said. “Legally, we can’t challenge the EIR at this point. But if the city staff determines that the grading exceeds what the original plan shows, then we’ll have a leg to stand on and maybe we can get another impact report.”