10 Years Later, Community Still Going as Planned

Twice a day for the past 10 years, Jack Wynns has taken a leisurely stroll around Lake Santa Margarita, waving a cheerful hello to friend and stranger alike.

“ ‘Do you know these people?’ my grandson asked me one day,” said Wynns. “I said, ‘Oh, no, people just talk to each other.’ You don’t have to know somebody to talk to them in Rancho Santa Margarita.”

As the community celebrated its 10th anniversary over the weekend, many residents gave Rancho Santa Margarita high marks for becoming the friendly, urban village envisioned by its developer, the Santa Margarita Co.

Though its development was slowed by a severe real estate slump in the early 1990s, the last two years have seen a renaissance for this community of 25,000 as several long-planned projects have risen from the ground: a new library, churches, the opening of the Foothill Transportation Corridor toll road and the first phase of the Town Center--the planned downtown “heart” of the community.

“This place has changed so much in just the short time I’ve been here,” said Mary McDonald, a two-year resident of Rancho Santa Margarita who volunteers at the library bookstore. “It’s fun to see new places like the movie theater and restaurants opening up.”

The goal of the Santa Margarita Co. and its president, Anthony Moiso, was simple yet profound.

The company’s game plan called for establishing a self-contained environment where residents could work and play without having to leave the community--a Hometown USA where every citizen was a neighbor.

Many housing tracts, for example, have their own walking trails, parks and neighborhood community centers where residents run into each other. Unlike nearby Lake Mission Viejo, whose banks are largely walled off and inaccessible to the public, Lake Santa Margarita is a people magnet, drawing large crowds of joggers, picnickers and pedestrians on the weekends.

Three years ago, Town Center was a flat stretch of dirt where company officials planned to supply all the cornerstones of urban life: shopping, schools, library, entertainment, parks and housing.

Several of the blank spaces still need filling in, but many components have appeared since 1994, including a new community library, a movie theater, several shops and restaurants. Work has started on a park.

“The building has come a little slowly, but now I can see the outlines of our future town where before there was very little here,” said six-year resident Janine Thomas, sipping a cup of coffee in the nearby Antonio Plaza shopping center. “Now we’ve got places to shop, places to eat and a movie theater.”

But in other areas, the vision is still incomplete.

In 1993 and 1994, industrial park sales for new businesses in Rancho Santa Margarita were zero. With home sales also plummeting, the Santa Margarita Co. faced bankruptcy at one point.

“Was it a tough time?” Moiso asked. “We were really beat up.

“We took a couple of mandatory eight-counts, we had a number of dreams that didn’t quite come true,” he said. “It’s been hard.”

The company was forced to find a new investing partner, Copley Real Estate Advisors, which took over management of the planned community earlier this year.

The fresh infusion of cash is helping Rancho Santa Margarita move forward, but takes Moiso’s hand off the helm of a project built on land his family has owned for about a century.

“It was a bittersweet decision” to take in a partner, Moiso said.

With 25,000 residents, Rancho Santa Margarita is beginning to experience the ills of larger cities.

The community had its first drive-by shooting last year, although nobody was hurt. Some residents who live by the lake say it has become a hangout for idle teenagers.

“I’ve heard some of the [Orange County sheriff’s] deputies call it ‘Rancho Santa Ana,’ ” said one elderly resident, who asked not to be identified. “All the noise and people down there make it quite unpleasant to live. I’m very sorry we moved here.”

The community is growing up in other ways. Some residents organized to protest plans for an auto mall, which was eventually approved. Cityhood has become a hot topic in local coffee shops and a group organized to explore incorporation expects to have an economic feasibility study finished next month.

But Moiso said it’s a good sign that residents take a passionate interest in Rancho Santa Margarita.

“This is what’s supposed to happen,” he said. “I think it’s healthy for them to say, ‘We don’t want this here.’ This is their community.”

But there is more work to be done.

In the next 10 years, Rancho Santa Margarita is expected to become a community of 40,000.

That means more housing construction, more industrial parks and the completion of the community parks, hiking trails, stores and homes that will be Town Center.

But as they relaxed on a grassy knoll overlooking the lake during a community festival celebrating the 10-year anniversary Saturday, Rudy and Elaine Saporite reflected that Rancho Santa Margarita looks pretty good right now.

“Look at how nice everything is here,” said Rudy Saporite, who retired to Rancho Santa Margarita from Torrington, Conn. “My kids used to ask me why I moved to California. After they visited me here, they don’t ask that anymore.”