Canyon People Fight On to Protect Their Quiet Land

The Holtz Ranch sits off one of Orange County’s last meandering country roads, a collection of weathered, century-old buildings and rusting farm equipment decaying serenely on fallow fields.

For decades, developers hungry to subdivide those fields have been pushed out again and again by a few hundred residents who live in the nearby Santa Ana Mountains.

They are known as “the canyon people.” And in Orange County, where development has long been king, they are the proverbial peasants who can rise up and revolt like no one else.

“The people out there are crazy--they’re the type who will chain themselves to bulldozers,” said Craig Atkins of O’Donnell Atkins, California’s largest land broker.

Residents of narrow Silverado, Modjeska and Trabuco canyons, like other fiercely protective residents of threatened rural areas across California, don’t wield pitchforks; they simply wear down or try to outfox would-be builders.

Those who attend development meetings in these communities lacing the edges of Cleveland National Forest can include pet geese, wandering dogs, heavily bearded or ponytailed men and their well-heeled neighbors, many of whom are darkly suspicious of outsiders.

The Irvine Co., the county’s largest landowner, will try to woo canyon residents at a community meeting tonight, in a bid to build 2,500 homes along scenic Santiago Canyon Road and Irvine Lake.

It won’t be easy.

Developers have fought costly, often fruitless battles in the rough-and-tumble mountainous eastern edge of Orange County for decades. A surging real estate market and a dearth of undeveloped land elsewhere now has them lining up to try their luck again.

About 5,000 new homes, a gas station and strip mall, and an enlarged jail facility have all been proposed in the sparsely settled canyon areas. Local activists admit that this time around, some projects could move forward. But not without a fight.

Last week, scores of canyon folk, some armed with farm animals, sharply questioned plans for a dozen multimillion-dollar estates proposed on 69 of Holtz Ranch’s 320 acres in Silverado Canyon.

A few months ago, Trabuco Canyon residents outfitted a model airplane with a camera and took aerial photos of a county contractor illegally grading to expand a juvenile detention center.

Atkins said such opposition can reduce property values and drive up development costs. But if a developer or builder does win needed approvals, values skyrocket, he said, because there is little risk that other development will crowd in.

Similar pockets of opposition to development exist in rural communities throughout California, land-use experts say. From the El Dorado farming area between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe to parts of the Santa Monica Mountains northwest of Los Angeles, longtime residents and recreational users have fought for years to stave off any change.

“They consider these places sacred ground,” Atkins said. “They’ve lived there for 35 years, or they’ve taken their bikes or their dogs out there since they were children. They think it’s their land.... Of course, it’s not.”

Atkins’ firm approached more than 100 potential buyers of the old Holtz Ranch turkey farm before it was bought in 1999 by a subsidiary of Marnell Correo Associates, a Las Vegas casino builder, for $5 million--half the price that a national home builder almost paid a year earlier before running into a buzz saw of local opposition. By proposing just 12 homes on lots of four to seven acres, Marnell is betting it could hit the jackpot.

They will be huge--proposed design rules call for mandatory house sizes of 4,000 to 10,000 square feet. Lawns must be planted within a year, and inexpensive construction materials such as aluminum siding--not uncommon on existing canyon homes--will be banned.

Three years after buying the ranch, with costs rising, Marnell bosses are learning how big a gamble it is to try to build. A community meeting last week was packed with residents, including a smattering of well-heeled professionals among the rugged individualists asking pointed questions of the company’s representatives.

“I brought my little friend here with me tonight because I want to know if this property is going to remain zoned agricultural,” said Lora Meadows, 43, hoisting a large honking goose named Huey. “These hoity-toity people you plan on moving here ... need to understand that the animals were here first.... What are they going to do when the mountain lion that regularly wanders across that land eats their kitty?”

“All you’re doing is putting a rich person’s ghetto out in the middle of an economically diverse community,” said Silverado Canyon resident Lou Tornatzsky, 62.

Representatives for the developer tried to soothe feathers, noting they were requesting a fraction of the legally allowed number of homes on the property.

Assistant project manager Rick Fitch of Hunsaker & Associates has never seen such extensive questioning of a small project.

“I’ve been at meetings for 800 new homes in Irvine, and three people showed up,” Fitch said. “But this isn’t Irvine.”

He said he thought the county planning staff had demanded numerous redesigns and costly environmental studies on the Holtz Ranch project because of the county’s run-ins in nearby Trabuco Canyon. On Friday, a state judge threw out the county probation department’s plans for expanding the juvenile center after reviewing the model plane photos.

Such creativity is a hallmark of canyon resistance, some said.

“I think people who come up here underestimate the intelligence of the community,” said Lucille Cruz, 47, librarian of the one-room Silverado Canyon public library for a quarter-century. “It’s been a long-held belief that there are a bunch of hillbillies up here, backwoods people.... But you know, it’s a group of fighters, very knowledgeable people.”

Marnell’s Web site indicates the hope to complete the Silverado Canyon project in 2004 at a cost of $14 million.

Meddick, a longtime opponent of canyon development, conceded that the scaled-back project stands a chance of winning approvals. But she’s not giving up. “They will make all the traditional mistakes,” she said.

Sherry Meddick, 49, said the 5,000 new homes proposed in various projects would destroy the canyon way of life with air pollution, night glare, increased traffic and other urban woes.

The Irvine Co. already has approvals for 1,700 homes along Santiago Canyon Road, in addition to the 2,500 more being proposed between Silverado Canyon and Irvine Lake.