Neighbors: New Homes Too Pricey

A plan to build $700,000 homes in a middle-class Garden Grove neighborhood has run into a wall of opposition from residents who worry the houses will be too posh for their World War II-era community.

Sure, home values may go up. But down-home values may be lost, they say.

“We count this as a very precious area within Southern California,” resident Steve Raganold said. “We’re all middle-class folks. We’re not a rich community. We want to maintain the character.”

But their complaints have stirred a counterattack from the frustrated developer, including a newspaper ad, fliers and signs that some residents say appeal to racism rather than reason.

The debate began when scores of local residents filed into the City Council chamber in late June, drawn by a proposed zoning change that would let a developer build 14 houses on 2.7 acres off Gilbert Street, an older neighborhood of low-slung ranch homes, deep lots and mature magnolia, eucalyptus and orange trees.

Developer James Barisic, the 59-year-old president of Santa Ana-based Brandywine Development Corp., and a some other people rose to speak in favor of the project. They argued that houses double the price of existing homes would increase property values.

But most who spoke during the four-hour meeting argued that the project was too big and congested, a vertical development of two-story houses amid mostly single-story homes on tree-shrouded lots.

The property, which Brandywine bought over the past few months, consists of five oversized lots. One is vacant, three are occupied by single houses and the fourth holds two homes, all dating from the 1940s. The houses had deteriorated over the years until they were barely habitable. Brandywine razed them last week, and few in the neighborhood were sorry to see them go.

Late last year, Brandywine proposed a 16-home gated community on the site. That proposal was rejected by the Planning Commission. Brandywine then proposed 14 four-bedroom homes in two styles, one at 3,200 square feet and the other 3,400.

“We’ve spent over a year trying to craft a development proposal that would be a benefit for the community,” Barisic said at the June council meeting. “I really believe that what we have done works well with the neighborhood.”

Like many of Orange County’s older neighborhoods, the area around Gilbert Street and Lampson Avenue reflects a certain outlook on life. Flags flew proudly here well before Sept. 11, yards are neatly trimmed and the streets exude orderliness from the anchor-chain fence in front of Paul Toepel’s house to the detailed gazebo across Halekulani Drive in Al and Lorena Ruskin’s backyard.

Despite a certain cynicism about politics, there is a reservoir of goodwill here, a presumption that elected officials ultimately will do the public’s bidding. If logic wouldn’t sway the council, the neighbors reasoned, sheer numbers would carry the day.

So at the end of the meeting, when the council voted 3 to 2 to approve the developer’s plans, emotions tumbled in ways they never had before -- at least for Toepel, the Ruskins and others.

“It makes you mad,” said Lorena Ruskin, 73, who has lived for 25 years with her husband, a retired aeronautical engineer, at the end of Halekulani Drive. “They’re not listening to us.”

Thus began the revolution, California-style. Gilbert Street-area residents came together in the Central Garden Grove Neighborhood Assn. to launch a petition drive they hope will force a city referendum to overturn the council’s decision. Once they started the drive, the developer was barred from proceeding with construction until the issue is resolved by the campaign’s failure to gain enough signatures, or until the referendum is put before voters next spring or fall.

And that, neighbors say, is when things got ugly.

Days after the petition drive began, Brandywine placed two signs on the property -- one in English, the other in Vietnamese -- offering the land for sale with the top-listed potential use as “Pagoda, Temple, Mosque or other Religious Facilities,” allowed uses under the existing zoning.

To some, it looked like an attempt to generate support for the project by appealing to racial fears among white residents in this city of 165,000.

Residents were further angered by what some saw as another attempt to play one racial group off another when the developer took out an ad in a Vietnamese-language newspaper urging people to support the project. The ad extolled the project as “opportunities for people to become an owner of new beautiful, luxury homes” that are threatened by a group composed largely of “elderly Anglo-Saxons” who “do not want to permit new neighbors in the area.”

Many white residents call the claim a smear, pointing out that the neighborhood is nearly half white and one-third Asian. They were further angered that the project’s backers believed they could sway public opinion with what they see is a base appeal to racist beliefs.

“This really has set me over the edge,” said Raganold, 49, who said he moved with his wife and young daughter to Garden Grove 11 years ago precisely for its diversity. “He’s pulled out the damn race card now.”

Barisic, who lives in Laguna Beach, said he paid for the newspaper ad and while he didn’t write the copy, he did not consider the phrasing -- or his signs -- to be racially inflammatory.

“Any logical, rational person would say there is not one thing racist about that,” Barisic said, though he acknowledged receiving several telephone calls from people upset about the wording. “It’s not a threat. I don’t go around threatening people. We try to be a positive influence in the community.”

Barisic said that if his company is delayed in developing the site, he would have to sell it to avoid defaulting on loans. Given opposition to developing houses there, he said, the most logical use is for a religious or similar building. “I regret if [neighbors] believe we did that as a threat,” he said.

Like all revolutions, the effort has brought into the political debate people who are new to the stage, who are energized by emotion but also by the sense that their government has failed them in a fundamental way.

“The people oppose this, but the politicians say they know what the people want,” said Toepel, 62, a retired structural ironworker whose 8,000-square-foot yard abuts the development site. “What makes me mad is City Hall says it knows what’s good for me.”

Mayor Bruce Broadwater said the city listened, but the people didn’t.

“They just don’t like the word ‘no,’ ” Broadwater said. “I understand that. They’re human. I don’t like the word ‘no’ either.”

City officials signed on, Broadwater said this week, because the opposition did not come up with a consensus on what it wanted instead. “They were never very good about coming to us and talking about a compromise,” Broadwater said. “Some were saying they wanted four houses, some eight. As a group they couldn’t come [up with a plan] to get a compromise going. So we just went forward with it.”

Councilman Mark Leyes expected the fallout when he announced at the June meeting that he also would support Brandywine’s plan. “I think that this does preserve the rural character of Gilbert,” Leyes said. “I know I’m going to lose votes and maybe lose a couple of friends.”

*

Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.