Vote Due on Mobile Home Park No One Wants

The tale began when county leaders first approved a developer’s plan to build a community of 705 mobile homes on the untouched hillsides and ravines of Trabuco Canyon.

Over 20 years, five more developers failed at the project, and the cast of characters opposing it grew to include the neighboring Ramakrishna monastery and a Roman Catholic abbey, motorcycle riders who frequent the stunning canyon and a former Miss Texas.

One county supervisor was tarnished by his involvement with the project, a development company collapsed in the savings and loan crisis of 1990, another went bankrupt, and both sides in the past have hired private detectives to spy on each other.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take what could be the deciding vote on the 222-acre project.

But instead of being the end, the vote is just another chapter in the story of a development no one wants. Not even the developer.

The abbey, backed largely by millionaire former Texas beauty queen Katherine Swiss, has offered the developer, Aradi Inc., $5.2 million to scale back its plan to 200 homes, none of them mobile. Lawyers for Aradi say that isn’t enough, and they are confident supervisors will give them the go-ahead to build.

In the latest twist to the convoluted tale, Aradi doesn’t want to build the mobile home park anymore.

What the developer is seeking from Tuesday’s vote is leverage to get the zoning change it needs to build a smaller project of 299 more expensive homes on the site. Otherwise, Aradi wants more money from the abbey.

The board vote is to certify an environmental impact report that is the last major hurdle to the mobile home park.

“Obviously no one, including the county and the developer, wants to develop the massive [mobile home] project, so why on earth are we even considering the approval of an EIR which would allow grading to commence that very project?” said Edmond Connor, the lawyer for the Ramakrishnas.

Connor said that if the board gives its go-ahead to the mobile home park, his clients will sue. Lawyers for the developer say if someone doesn’t offer them a better deal before the vote, they will have no choice but to start moving 11.5 million cubic yards of dirt for the mobile home park nobody wants.

“The whole thing gives me nightmares,” said Shirley Commons Long, who as chairwoman of the county’s planning commission voted reluctantly to move the mobile home park project forward in December, setting up the supervisors’ vote.

“I think everyone is opposed to this project. It was a mistake years ago to approve the tract map in the first place. But now it’s all so twisted together, no one knows how to undo what’s been done and move on.”

With increasing force over the years, the monastery and the abbey have argued that the land is unsuitable for development because it is hilly, home to several endangered species and prone to landslides. Besides, they say, a housing development in the middle of Trabuco Canyon would take away from the atmosphere of peaceful contemplation both religious orders seek.

The monks and priests of St. Michael’s Abbey sing their Masses in Gregorian chant. The Ramakrishnas, an independent faith rooted in Hinduism, have hosted such writers as Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley.

To Aradi, Saddleback Meadows is an investment opportunity it has put too much money into to walk away. Aradi representative Frank Elfand said the company has spent about $6.5 million on the property, including the purchase price and improvements.

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In the 1970s, when the mobile home park was proposed, “manufactured housing” was hot. But by 1990, when Aradi bought the land at an auction of failed savings and loan assets, mobile homes weren’t making high profits anymore.

So in 1996, Aradi asked for a zoning change that would permit it to build 318 estate-style homes. The supervisors rejected the proposal after a nasty lobbying campaign by both sides.

Before the campaign was over, Aradi paid a $14,000 fine for laundering $5,000 in campaign contributions to Supervisor Jim Silva.

Both sides hired private detectives to dig up dirt on their opponents. Some of it was thrown at Supervisor William G. Steiner, who had spoken out for the project. A complaint was filed with the district attorney alleging Steiner’s vote had been tainted when he accepted $5,500 in promotional fees from a restaurant in which the developer’s lobbyist was a small investor.

The district attorney’s office shut down its investigation soon after it began, saying there was nothing to investigate.

When the smaller project was rejected, Aradi representatives, armed with the two-decades old entitlement to build the mobile home park, sought to start building the original project.

“It took us two years to work out an alternative with the staff, but finally we came up with the 318-home proposal, which we thought was a generous offer,” Elfand said.

When the board rejected the proposal, Elfand said, he told county officials “we would have no choice but to go ahead with the original mobile home park proposal.”

County officials didn’t like the idea.

‘We said, ‘Woah, not so fast,’ ” said a county planner who asked not to be identified. “You need to do another [environmental study]. Times have changed. Circumstances have changed. We’ve learned a lot more about this land in 20 years.”

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Early last year, Aradi started again with a new environmental impact report that has been moving through the planning process.

But now that the supervisors could give the project the go-ahead, Elfand said the developer doesn’t want to install mobile homes.

“We have indicated publicly this year that we would prefer to build a 299-single-family home development, which we believe is substantially more compatible with the adjacent land uses than the 705 units,” Elfand said.

Opponents of the project, led by the monastery and boosted by contributors like Swiss, who lives in Coto de Caza, are asking for fewer homes. For nearly a year, Swiss and other benefactors of the monastery have been discussing how to preserve the tranquil canyon. The result was the offer the monastery made this month.

Swiss declined to be interviewed for this article.

“The bottom line is: There’s a huge difference of opinion, an irreconcilable difference of opinion, about whether this property can be developed,” said Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who opposes the mobile home park and has sought without luck to get a conservancy interested in buying the land.

“I don’t think anyone wants to see a development right now that would devastate the land. But we’re not going to be able to keep the developer from doing something up there. What we’re trying to do is put together a compromise that allows for development of the property in the basin [of the canyon] but that will preserve the ridgelines. That may be all we can expect.”