Closing In on Canyons

A little-noted court victory has removed a major hurdle for construction of a controversial strip mall at the edge of the Cleveland National Forest--a decision that also has fueled critics’ fears that developers are gaining ground in decades-old battles over building in local canyons.

Two other pending proposals--one old, one new--could add nearly 500 homes to the sparsely populated hillsides around the bucolic Cook’s Corner, at El Toro and Live Oak Canyon roads, near the forest.

The most recent proposal, filed by Eastbridge Partners in December, also seeks permission to chop down more than 1,000 mature live oaks--some more than 5 feet in diameter and hundreds of years old--and grade building sites out of steep-sloped hillsides.

The development pressure isn’t limited to the Trabuco Canyon area. At the other end of Santiago Canyon Road, where it leaves the rugged canyons for the city of Orange, the Irvine Co. hopes to build up to 1,746 homes on 494 acres, part of the company’s long-range plans to spread 12,000 houses over 7,110 acres.

The protracted legal battle over a controversial Live Oak Plaza strip mall and gas station at Cook’s Corner ended in December when the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling that said the project could proceed.

Some canyon-dwellers fear the projects--beginning with the Live Oak Plaza development--will forever change their way of life, which evokes Orange County in the days when ranches held cattle, not housing tracts.

“I’m really concerned about the light and the noise,” said Judy Wyatt, 57, who fled the density of suburban Dana Point 17 years ago for the Trabuco Canyon area, and whose house abuts the strip-mall site. “We don’t need it. It’s not rural, and it’s not keeping the area rural.”

Of deeper concern to critics is Eastbridge Partners’ request to loosen limits on tree-cutting and grading contained in the 1991 Foothill/Trabuco Specific Plan, adopted to protect the sensitive canyons.

Changing the guidelines, critics fear, could signal developers that hurdles to building in the environmentally fragile area could be lowered.

“It’s basically gutting it and making all the work we did back in ’91 . . . worthless,” said Pete DeSimone, manager of the National Audubon Society’s nearby Starr Ranch and a director of the society’s local Sea & Sage chapter.

But developer William Shopoff, one of the principals in Eastbridge Partners, said its tree-cutting and grading proposal falls within existing requirements. The zoning change, which would be limited to its sites, would resolve what he views as conflicts within the Specific Plan. For example, he said, in one place, the plan seems to bar cutting trees, although elsewhere it sets out formulas for replacing them.

“We actually don’t deem it to be as radical a change as some people perceive it to be,” said Shopoff, who moved to Laguna Beach from Texas this year. “We’re seeking the changes on the advice of counsel. It’s been a fairly litigious group in the canyons and we’re trying to reflect what the plan really said.”

Eastbridge wants to build 141 houses in their proposed Saddle Creek development east of the existing Santiago Estates, and another 46 houses in the related Saddle Crest proposal to the west. Prices would hover around $1 million per home in the gated communities, Shopoff said.

Access to both projects would be from Santiago Canyon Road, although the main entrance for Saddle Creek would be from Live Oak Canyon Road, which cuts through the proposed development site. About 70% of the site--mostly unbuildable terrain farthest from canyon roads--would remain wild lands.

The County Planning and Development Services Department will accept public comment on the report until Feb. 12. Frank McGill, senior planner for the county, declined to discuss specifics of the proposal because he said county planners had yet to review it in detail.

Once the plan is evaluated, he said, it would be forwarded to the Foothill/Trabuco Review Board, the county Planning Board and ultimately, the county Board of Supervisors.

Canyon preservationists are already lining up against the proposal. “We want them to stick with the Specific Plan,” said Ray Chandos, secretary/treasurer of the Rural Canyons Conservation Fund. ‘They’re either supposed to leave the trees or move them. They can’t destroy them.”

Chandos also opposed the Live Oak Plaza project, which calls for a gas station, strip mall and three single-family homes to be built in pastureland adjacent to St. Michael’s Abbey.

Ken France, 49, of Laguna Niguel, one of the owners of the property since 1978, said final site plans are being drawn up, but a groundbreaking date has not been set. County building and grading permits also have yet to be sought.

The Live Oak Plaza site is adjacent to another project that’s been the site of the county’s longest-running development disputes: Saddleback Meadows.

First proposed for development as a trailer park in 1978, the site has drawn interest from more than a half-dozen developers. It is nestled between two sanctuaries, St. Michael’s Abbey of Norbertine Fathers and the Vedanta Society’s Ramakrishna Monastery.

Previous development efforts failed, often under the weight of local opposition, shaky financing and bankruptcy. The current owners, California Quartet, of Washington, D.C., bought the property in 1993 and later supplanted the initial proposal for a trailer park with plans to build 299 single-family homes.

The developers lost a lengthy court battle last fall in which the state Court of Appeal ruled against the county Board of Supervisors, which, in 1998, tied 2-2 on the project, then agreed to let it proceed.

Pike Oliver, a representative for California Quartet, said the court did not rule against the project itself, but the procedures used to approve it.

“We’re still working with the county to figure out what needs to be done” to revive the project,” Oliver said. “I’m not sure exactly when we’ll get that all resolved.”

Cisca Stellhorn, 50, hopes the plans never get resolved. She moved to Trabuco Canyon 12 years ago from Santa Ana Heights and quickly became enraptured by the delicate balance of life around her house, where coyotes howl at night and hawks hover overhead by day. When she needs food or gas, she drives a few miles to Mission Viejo.

Under the proposals, her modest house would be surrounded on three sides by million-dollar homes and on the fourth by the Live Oak Plaza strip mall.

“To me, it would be no real benefit to anybody,” said Stellhorn.

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Advance of Civilization?

Local developers won a court victory late last year that could lead to construction of Live Oak Plaza, a strip mall, at the edge of Cleveland National Forest. Two housing proposals, Saddleback Meadows and Saddle Crest/Saddle Creek, could alter lifestyles and the terrain in the canyon area.

Source: Development Resource Consultants