SIGNAL HILL : Court Case Delays Hilltop Housing Tract

Plans for a hilltop housing tract have been put on hold while two companies wage a court battle for control of the $130-million project.

The delay was announced last week by Stephen P. Doyle, vice president of Coscan Signal Partners, which hopes to build 525 homes on 120 acres east of Cherry Avenue.

Councilman Michael J. Noll said he had high hopes for the development, “but now I’m extremely disappointed.”

The project has been on the drawing boards for 5 1/2 years. Coscan, a Canadian housing developer, teamed up with Signal Hill Petroleum, which owns the land, to tackle the project.

The partnership originally sought to build up to 1,200 homes, including houses with price tags as high as $700,000 and condominiums costing between $250,000 and $300,000. But the city later imposed a limit of 525 homes.

As the real estate market soured, so did the relationship between Coscan and Signal Hill Petroleum. Coscan filed a lawsuit against its partner in June, 1994, asking the Orange County Superior Court to rule that Coscan is the managing partner. Signal Hill Petroleum responded a week later with a similar lawsuit against Coscan.

Coscan has assured the city that it will cover the barren hillsides with vegetation by the end of the month to prevent a repeat of massive erosion that occurred during the winter rains. The company had just started grading the site when the first major storms hit in January, unleashing torrents of mud onto adjacent streets.