Brookfield Homes wants to build 151 new condos in 11 buildings on 8.9 acres adjacent to Auto Center Drive in Foothill Ranch. They come before the Planning Commission on June 6 to discuss their proposal. For more details about the proposal, click on one of these previous articles.
Is Lake Forest For Sale?
City Wants More Traffic
Is Brookfield a Good Neighbor?
This is a summary of the May 23 meeting held last week.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
Nearly a dozen Lake Forest residents opposed the project. There were basically 5 major reasons:
· Tandem parking will not work. One parking spot will be lost to storage. This will force cars onto the street, causing overcrowding, vandalism, increased street repair costs, more traffic problems, etc. – Tim Morrisett, Ian Morrell, Barbara Taylor, Amanda Morrell, John Nunez, Jim Gardner, Paul Matheis, Terry Anderson, Jerry Verplanke, Jerry Zechmeister
· Planning Commission needs to completely overhaul the residential parking standards which are out of date. Brookfield and other developers need to wait until the City has done its job revising parking standards. – Amanda Morrell, Ian Morrell, Jim Gardner, Terry Anderson.
· Re-zoning the area is not needed. There are already 4,000 new homes scheduled to be built. We are already overdeveloped. – Tim Morrisett, Jeff Evans, John Nunez, Jim Gardner, Paul Matheis, Jerry Verplanke
· The project has some aesthetic problems. – Tim Morrisett, Patty Ayers, Jerry Zechmeister
· No adequate provisions for children. Area is dangerous for children due to extremely high traffic. – Dave Herzberg, Paul Matheis, Jerry Zechmeister
The only Lake Forest resident who spoke in favor of the project wanted to “transform an eyesore” and thought that the 151 new homes would help the nearby businesses. He was confident Brookfield would “solve the parking problem” despite the testimony of half a dozen Board members from Lake Forest HOAs who testified that parking was a major un-solved problem for them (Cedar Glen, LeParc, Foothill Ranch, LFCA1).
BTW – one resident has started a petition to demonstrate community opposition to the “alternative parking” (i.e., tandem) proposal. You can sign up by clicking here
THE RETURN OF TERRY ANDERSON
This meeting marked the first time former Planning Commissioner Terry Anderson appeared in his old stomping grounds. In characteristic attention to detail, his first comment was to correct some technical errors in the staff report, then he turned his attention to the matter in hand. He admonished the Commission that their actions “determines what happens to the community for years”, and that what they decide for Brookfield “affects the next projects” too, since there are already other developers who hope to use “alternative parking”. He indicated that his research on tandem parking indicates it produces only 1/3 of what it proposes to do, which means for the Brookfield project there will be “30 to 60 cars with no place to go.”
COMMISSIONER COMMENTS
The Brookfield project points to some fundamental philosophical differences between the Commissioners
Brower – “If we ask our developers to come in with a perfect plan, we’ll never get anything done.”
Hamilton – “Tandem parking is a free market choice. If it doesn’t work out, their (the developer’s) capital is at risk.”
Zechmeister – “We work for the people of Lake Forest, not the developers”
Verplancke – “Experience shows giving developers the benefit of the doubt can come back to haunt you. There’s always enough time to do something right, and never enough time to fix something wrong.”
BOTTOM LINE
People from Lake Forest are overwhelmingly against the project as proposed. I think that if there were changes to the proposal (e.g., more child friendly, better parking solutions, better aesthetics), most people would be in favor of the project, although there are still some that oppose the re-zoning and the addition of 151 new homes to the 4,000 already approved.
Notwithstanding the obvious flaws in the Brookfield proposal, two commissioners (Hamilton and Brower) appear ready to approve the proposal as it exists. They naively think that whatever flaws exist can be corrected later, and getting the project rolling is important. Their desire to be “business friendly” blinds them to the sequelae of bad decision making. As former Commissioner Terry Anderson warned them, “one you’ve rung the bell, it’s hard to un-ring it”. And as current Commissioner Jerry Verplancke noted, the City’s experience has been that “giving developers the benefit of the doubt can come back to haunt you.”
The other two Commissioners in attendance aren’t ready to go forward. Commissioner Verplancke believes that there are already so many homes scheduled for the City, some of which are coming online soon, it’s premature to be approving even more homes. Commissioner Zechmeister likes the idea of the project but is worried about the concerns outlined above.
NEXT STEP
A special meeting will be held on Thursday June 6, and Chairman Tim Hughes should be back from his first-respondent rescue efforts in Oklahoma by that time, so we’ll have 5 Commissioners in attendance and the 2-2 tie may be broken, one way or the other.
Stay tuned and stay informed. This is your city and decisions made here impact your life.
