Bixby Ranch Co. Holds Off on Seal Beach Development : Housing: Foes of 190-acre project fear it will be revived later. In withdrawing the plan, one of the firm’s executives admits to a lack of City Council support. The 23-acre commercial portion will proceed.
On the eve of what promised to be another bruising battle over development, the Bixby Ranch Co. has shelved a proposal to build 223 homes in the northern part of the city, a plan that was six years in the making.
Three days before public hearings on the 213-acre project were to begin before the City Council, company officials announced Friday that the Old Ranch Development Plan would be withdrawn.
“It’s obvious to us that we don’t have the votes,” Bixby Ranch Co. Senior Vice President Ron Bradshaw said. He said the company will proceed with commercial development on 23 acres already zoned for business.
Bradshaw said the new project likely would consist of retail stores and could be underway by spring.
The Bixby Co. plans to wait until the political climate of the developer-unfriendly council changes before submitting another residential development plan for the remaining 190 acres, according to Bradshaw.
The terms of two of the city’s five council members expire in March.
“There are a lot of people in the community who will look at this issue and see what they’ve lost by not working with the landowner,” Bradshaw said. “It was opposed by a very vocal minority, but they’ve been successful.”
Some residents who opposed the project, despite promises of a new community center and net revenues of $800,000 a year to the city, say they do not believe the developers want to move ahead with a different plan.
“We know they’re going to come back again,” said 25-year resident John Follis. “They’ve got a lot of time and a lot of money. My feeling is that this is only a temporary withdrawal of the development.”
Homeowners who live in the northern section of the city known as College Park East, a middle-class neighborhood sandwiched between the 5,000-acre Naval Weapons Station and the 1,300-acre Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center, had mobilized for a final assault on the proposed development plan at Monday’sCouncil meeting.
The proposal had been dissected during many hours of Planning Commission hearings last summer. In July, commissioners approved the project’s environmental impact report but voted 3-2 to reject the overall project because of concerns over traffic congestion. In a guardedly small municipality where the possibility of putting parking meters on Main Street has sparked fears of urban blight, City Council hearings on the project were expected to last through December.
The Old Ranch Development Plan called for 98 luxury homes on about 23 acres overlooking the Old Ranch Country Club golf course, 2,200 feet from the Reserve Center’s main runway. An additional 125 affordable housing units were planned north of the luxury homes, across from the Rossmoor Center on Seal Beach Boulevard. The project also included plans for a hotel, restaurant and other commercial property on 13 acres stretching east from the corner of Seal Beach Boulevard and Lampson Avenue.
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The battle felt familiar to residents of this part-beach, part-retirement, part-suburban community of 25,000 who are still have scars from a five-year brawl over a proposal to develop the 149-acre Hellman Ranch property. That conflict prompted the resignation of a council member, led to a citywide referendum, and ended up in court.
Voters rejected the Mola Development Corp. project on a 1991 advisory ballot. And the following year, the state Supreme Court refused the company’s efforts to reverse a lower-court decision against the project.
Opponents of the Old Ranch Development Plan saw it as a Trojan horse from which larger projects would emerge. New residents living in expensive golf course homes near the main runway of the Armed Forces Reserve Center would have brought pressure on the base to relocate, paving the way for residential development on the base, opponents said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind they want to develop that land,” said Marty Mahrer, a 26-year resident and member of a community group formed in opposition to the project called PROBE, or People’s Response to Bixby Expansion.
That is considered a preposterous argument by those who say the Old Ranch Development Plan would have brought badly needed revenues to a city under fire for its 11% utility tax, the highest in the county.
Joe Siler, who has lived in the neighborhood for 24 years and a supports the residential plan, criticized the smaller commercial development. “This will actually generate more traffic and generate less revenue for the city,” he said. “This is very sad for our community.”
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Councilman Frank Laszlo, who represents the College Park East neighborhood, was widely believed to be opposed to the development. But Laszlo, whose council term expires in March, said his mind was not made up.
“The citizens of the area were concerned about traffic and about jeopardizing the mission of the Armed Forces Reserve Center,” Laszlo said. “I would hope that we, the city, could work together to get a project that would be compatible with all parties.”
Calls to the four other council members for comment were not returned.
With the city’s history of conflict over land development, Bixby Co. supporter Tom Ross predicted the loss of the Old Ranch Development will accelerate political acrimony.
“This is going to drive a wedge right between people in the city of Seal Beach,” Ross said. “The outspoken opponents of this project are going to have to live with the consequences of their actions for a long, long time.”
