Saddleback Meadows Vote Delayed

Environmentalists and regulators scored a victory Tuesday morning when the Board of Supervisors postponed a vote on whether to approve a 299-home housing project that many fear would block a crucial wildlife corridor.

The delay was approved to allow more time to firm up a deal under which a land conservancy would acquire 178 acres of Saddleback Meadows, preserving the corridor while allowing the developer to build homes on the remaining 44 acres.

Negotiators worked until midmorning on the plan, which remains under discussion and will be subject to supervisors’ approval, officials said. But environmentalists expressed relief that supervisors delayed voting on the 299-home project to allow more work on the alternative.

“I’m happy they didn’t approve 299 units,” said Pete DeSimone of the National Audubon Society. But environmentalists want to be sure the alternative plan will mesh with a regional system of wildlife preserves, he said.

The plan, if it materializes, could conclude two decades of jockeying over development of the Trabuco Canyon meadow lands. The land is flanked by St. Michael’s Abbey, owned by a Roman Catholic religious order, and the Ramakrishna monastery, part of an independent faith tied to Hinduism.

The two religious centers strongly opposed the 299-home project, attempting to buy some or all of the land to preserve the meadows’ tranquillity.

State and federal regulators also vigorously raised concerns about the project’s effect on wildlife, taking the unusual step of writing a joint letter to supervisors to express their qualms.

The developer and two religious centers have been attempting to strike a peace pact for months with the aid of Supervisor Todd Spitzer. But the talks repeatedly have been derailed, and as recently as this weekend some negotiators were dubious that a compromise could be forged in time.

“The parties are back on track,” Spitzer announced at the board meeting.

Supervisors agreed to postpone action until their Nov. 24 meeting, and Spitzer reserved the right to call a special meeting Dec. 1 if necessary.

Parties on both sides appeared upbeat as they left the meeting.

“I’m optimistic,” said Pike Oliver, a principal with TPG Management Inc., a Newport Beach-based firm managing the project for landowner California Quartet.

“I’d like to see pristine wilderness,” said Kathryn Swiss, a St. Michael’s Abbey benefactor who has offered to contribute $3.7 million to make the deal work. “It would be forever open space.”

Swiss said she became involved in the cause as a regular worshiper at 6:30 a.m. mass at the abbey who grew alarmed at the prospect of a housing project rising nearby. “My interest really was in protecting St. Michael’s Abbey,” she said.

Under the tentative deal, the $3.7 million would be added to $1.5 million in county funds to buy the 178 acres of open land. The land would be owned by the Saddleback Meadows Land Conservancy, a nonprofit group created for the purpose of overseeing the land.

The plan could preserve a wildlife corridor that some say is the crucial link between a growing network of nature preserves in central and southern Orange County. Those preserves are being designed under the state’s Natural Community Conservation Plan, a Wilson administration program with federal backing that seeks to balance growth with endangered species preservation.

Under the 299-home plan, part of that corridor would be reduced to a 500-foot-wide gap between home lots--a scenario that alarmed officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game.

In a joint letter to supervisors this week, the two agencies wrote that in the opinion of their biologists, neither of two earlier plans nor the 299-home plan would guarantee that animals--such as a threatened songbird, the California gnatcatcher--could move between the two preserves.

The 299-home plan, in fact, “would severely constrain wildlife movement . . . and is not acceptable,” wrote Fish and Wildlife Assistant Field Supervisor Jim A. Bartel and Fish and Game regional manager Ronald D. Rempel.