Housing Project Near Abbey Suffers Setback : Development: Builder won’t contest need for environmental impact report. Monks, seminarians, residents oppose new homes.

Faced with opposition from more than 50 placard-waving Catholic prep-school boys and 10 white-robed priests, a development company Tuesday withdrew its opposition to doing an environmental impact report on its plan to grade 94 acres of pristine land next to a Trabuco Canyon abbey.

“We’re at a fork in the road in the process,” a company spokesman told the Orange County Planning Commission before withdrawing an appeal of the county’s determination that a new impact report is required.

“One path would lead to litigation, the other to compromise. We believe there is a workable plan, and we’d like to be able to work on it,” said Frank R. Elfend, a land-use consultant representing the developer, Aradi Inc. of Los Angeles.

Elfend said the company would spend the next 90 to 120 days meeting with representatives of St. Michael’s Abbey and various community groups to create a development plan with which everyone can live.

A spokesman for the abbey, however, expressed skepticism, as did some area residents.

“I don’t know how much compromise is possible,” said Father Vincent Gilmore, spiritual director of the abbey whose 30 resident monks and seminarians oppose the development as an intrusion into their contemplative and abstinent lifestyle.

“We haven’t had a good relationship with” the developer, he said. “We’ll sit down and hear what they have to say, but they are really going to have to address all of the issues. . . . We don’t really trust them.”

Aradi Inc.--which owns 233 acres of hillside land known as Saddleback Meadows next to the abbey--wants to build at least 297 homes on a portion of the acreage, a plan bitterly opposed by abbey priests and by nearby residents as environmentally damaging.

“Our intent is to comply with the law, including requirements for environmental documentation,” Elfend said. “We’re hopeful that the community will work with us to help forge a consensus plan.” Because an EIR was done in 1980 as part of a former owner’s proposal to build a 705-unit mobile home park on the property, Aradi executives had argued that a new study was not needed.

County officials, however, had cited several new factors--including expanded development in the area and the presence of the Riverside fairy shrimp, an endangered species--to argue in favor of a new EIR.

Despite the dour outlook of Gilmore, the lawyer representing the priests hailed Tuesday’s action.

“I’m just really thrilled,” attorney Gregory N. Weiler said. “It was a complete victory; I think the abbey has a lot to be happy about today.”

Nearby residents, many of whom fear that the housing development would destroy the area’s rural atmosphere, were pessimistic.

“It all sounds very nice,” said Marie Walsh, a community activist opposed to the project, “but it’s just further posturing. They’re only trying to get the residents to side with them. It’s like making a deal with the devil.”