Irvine Co. Sets Plan for 4,000 Homes in O.C.

Taking a giant step toward completing development of its historic ranch, the Irvine Co. on Friday announced plans for nearly 4,000 homes, a golf course, conference center and marina at the county’s rural eastern edge.

If approved by the city of Orange, the 2,100-acre area would be the next-to-last piece of what owner Donald Bren, 70, has reportedly called his “palette”: the 93,000-acre ranch that stretches from the Pacific inland to Riverside County.

Unlike Newhall Ranch, with its 21,000-home proposal, or Rancho Mission Viejo and its proposed 14,000-home build-out, the Irvine Co. has never unveiled all its plans at once. If the East Orange plans go through, the only uncharted area left would be the Anaheim Mountain Park section on the northeastern end of the ranch.

Friday’s announcement about East Orange was billed as a “dramatically downsized” plan from the 12,000 homes approved by the City Council in 1989. Major commercial and industrial developments would also be eliminated, as would several road expansion projects. Company officials had outlined reductions in 2001, on the heels of an 11,000-acre gift of open space by Bren. Overall, more than half of the ranch has been set aside as open space.

“Not only does this represent a dramatic shrinking of approved development long anticipated for the area, it significantly reduces traffic and other impacts that are anticipated in the city’s 1989 approved general plan,” said company spokesman John Christensen. “We believe that anyone who takes the time to review the history of our planning and our initiatives to preserve massive and sensitive open space and habitat will conclude that our project proposal is reasonable, preferable, fair and beneficial.”

Maps distributed by the company show clusters of development in four areas: already approved but unbuilt housing north of the Eastern Transportation Corridor toll road; another strip of apartments and homes and a sports park between the toll road and Irvine Lake; homes on the south side of the lake toward Silverado Canyon; and a smaller patch on the west side of Santiago Canyon Road in a centuries-old ranching area.

A golf course, marina and conference-center inn would be built on the site of gravel mining operations on the southeast end of the lake.

Development would occur in phases over 10 years.

Environmental and other approvals must be obtained before the projects can proceed. City officials and others adopted a wait-and-see attitude Friday, saying that while the ideas appeared sound, questions loomed about schools, traffic, public safety and recreational access.

“We’ve just talked concepts,” said City Councilwoman Carolyn Cavecche. “We haven’t actually taken off the gloves and gotten down to the details.”

Cavecche said her primary concerns were the costs of providing schools, police and firefighters for new residents, and ensuring adequate roads to handle increased traffic. The company estimates that the development would add 50,000 vehicle trips a day to the area but said planned widening of Santiago Canyon road to six lanes and other road expansion would not be needed. Expansion of Jeffrey Road from Irvine north is on the maps, but it is not guaranteed.

Chris Coontz, a USC student who sued the Irvine Co. over earlier East Orange plans known as Santiago Hills II and won concessions on runoff and wildlife, said that the revised development “looks like it has a lot of potential, but the devil is going to be in the details.”

Coontz, who is also an intern with the city of Los Angeles’ environmental affairs department, said he would prefer all the development were contiguous, rather than in different parcels, and wanted to ensure that low-cost housing was included. His major objection was to a golf course, which he said would drain large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides into Irvine Lake.

Longtime Silverado Canyon resident Sherry Meddick also would like to see all of the development clustered north of the lake, toward the existing city of Orange. She said building new roads and thousands of homes in the middle of open space would destroy wildlife corridors and harm other biological resources.

“All of this land [the Irvine Co.] dedicated as so-called open space is being crisscrossed by new roads, widened roads and houses plopped down in the middle,” she said.

A special City Council briefing on the proposal by Irvine Co. staff will be held at Chapman University on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in Beckman Hall.

Cavecche said she and others would be bargaining hard.

“Thirty years from now, I do not want somebody to drive down Santiago Canyon Road and say, ‘Who was the idiot in office when they messed over the last open space in ... Orange?’ I don’t want them pointing at my picture on the wall.”