O.C. Now at Cross Purposes on Trail

While one arm of county government is working to build a network of bike paths from the mountains of Orange County to its beaches, another just approved plans for a golf course that could block a key link in a South County network of trails.

The county Planning Commission approved Rancho Mission Viejo’s proposed 240-acre golf course this month, but without a requirement that the company build a bike trail that would run the length of the course. Instead, the developer will be required to build a smaller trail that dead-ends into ecologically sensitive preserve land.

Trail advocates warn that if the plan goes forward, it could kill plans to link O’Neill Regional Park with San Juan Capistrano by bike path, and they plan to ask the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the commission’s decision.

“If they build what they are proposing, they will potentially preclude the bikeway from happening,” said Jeff Dickman, the county’s chief of trail planning and implementation.

Dickman said the preserve land would probably have too many environmental restrictions to allow a trail extension. He would prefer that a bike path be built along the western edge of the golf course, but company officials have ruled out such a trail.

Rancho Mission Viejo company officials say they’ve been generous enough by dedicating the preserve to the county along with hundreds of other acres. They noted that they’re turning over dirt hiking and equestrian trails, and agreeing to build the 0.7-mile bike path.

“It would cost us $3.5 million to connect the bike trail all of the way up to Crown Valley Parkway,” company spokeswoman Diane Gaynor said. “That is more than the cost of the golf course.”

She noted that the county has yet to build three miles of a 10.4-mile trail segment that the golf course intersects. “It doesn’t make sense for us to have to go forward with this before the county gets more of it built,” Gaynor said.

The bike path network is written into the county’s Master Plan of Trails and into the Orange County Transportation Authority’s general plan. Developers seeking to build within the trail corridor typically are asked to provide links to the network in exchange for zoning changes.

Such contributions are crucial because building bike trails often costs about $1 million a mile.

The network is far from complete. The future golf course lies on the part of the planned trail that would extend from the city line north to Crown Valley Parkway, where another trail under construction would link up to it from the north. That’s about two miles. The company agreed to build a trail one-third that total length, from the city line to the preserve border.

Planning commissioners say that because the network is still in its infancy, they could not justify forcing the developer to spend millions on part of a project that may end up linking to nothing.

“I don’t think the Planning Commission thought it was the developer’s job to work out a county master-planned trail system if the county has yet to figure out exactly where the system will be located and what it will cost to construct,” Commissioner Brian Fisk said.

But Dickman said his department did not see the company’s trail proposal until a few days before it was approved, allowing little opportunity for a collaborative solution.

Trail advocates are watching the struggle closely. They say its resolution may set a precedent for how the county works with Rancho Mission Viejo, the landowner, on its proposal to build 14,000 homes on 25,000 acres in South County. The acreage is the last major swath of privately owned open space in Orange County and activists are eager to preserve as much of it as possible.

Trails4All, a nonprofit advocacy group, is mobilizing its members to lobby county supervisors and appeal the golf course approval.

“This kind of sets the stage for what’s to come,” said Jim Meyer, executive director of Trails4All. “This trail requirement has been on the county’s master plan and it has been ignored. . . . We need to get people from the mountains to the sea. If developers are not conditioned to put this in, it will never happen.”