Board OKs Strip Mall at Cook’s Corner

Trabuco Canyon residents lost another round Tuesday in their fight against suburbia’s encroachment when the Orange County Board of Supervisors gave preliminary approval to a strip mall and gas station across from Cook’s Corner.

By a 3-0 vote, supervisors gave conceptual approval to Live Oak Plaza, a 23-acre parcel. Six of those acres will be turned into a strip mall with 42,000 square feet of retail and office space, 234 parking spaces and a gas station with eight pumps; the remaining acres will be left as open space.

Ray Chandos, a spokesman for the Rural Canyons Conservancy Fund, which has fought a decades-old legal battle against the development, was clearly disappointed.

“We do intend to continue our fight, but right now I don’t know what our next step may be,” he said.

The conservancy had appealed a March 13 decision by the county planning commission, which had recommended the mall’s approval to the board. Supervisors Cynthia P. Coad, Jim Silva and Todd Spitzer made the decision to go forward with the project. Supervisors Chuck Smith and Tom Wilson were away on business.

The county received more than 350 letters from residents protesting the plaza plan and heard from more than a dozen speakers at Tuesday’s meeting. Canyon residents believe that once one such development is finalized, others already in the planning pipeline may follow.

Two other proposals could add nearly 500 homes to the sparsely populated hillsides around Cook’s Corner, a short distance down Live Oak Canyon Road from Cleveland National Forest.

The project now shifts from the planning process to the developer’s permitting process. That phase is more meticulous and involves drainage, environmental impact, archeological sites and water-quality issues, a planning spokesman said.

Of the speakers, many echoed the sentiments of John Sefton, a Trabuco Canyon resident who urged the board to abandon the plaza idea on the grounds that building it would adversely affect the quality of life in the canyon. “Surely it must be the 3,000th strip mall in Orange County and the 11,000th gas station. Why should we give up uniqueness for sameness?” Sefton said.

But the decision was good news for W. Dean Brown, a spokesman for Live Oak Plaza’s agent, the Planning Consortium in Orange. He said at least 70% of the property will be “left as is, as open space.”

Brown said the project uses only a small portion of the property, across from Cook’s Corner cafe--the county’s famed roadhouse at the intersection of El Toro, Live Oak Canyon and Santiago Canyon roads.

“We believe this project is in keeping with the rural nature of the area. But it’s been a long battle every step of the way,” he said.

Last year, Live Oak Plaza’s owners cleared a major legal hurdle when the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling that said the project could proceed. The lower court found that an environmental impact report was adequate and that an earlier Board of Supervisors’ approval to rezone the property from residential to commercial was supported by substantial evidence.

Chandos, whose conservancy lost the court battle, said he believes Tuesday’s board action will allow Live Oak Plaza’s owners to obtain a subdivision map as a precursor to selling the property to a developer.

Brown acknowledged that the owners, who acquired the property decades ago, are not commercial developers and do not have the funds to build the mall and gas station--meaning that they will probably sell it.

The next phase in the project’s planning may prove to be difficult for the parcel’s owners. They will encounter new oversight of project planning by supervisors and new opponents, including Clean Water Now!, who voiced concerns about polluting nearby Aliso Creek, and Native Americans, who say that there are two archeological sites on the land.

Bud Sepulveda, a member of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, said the county should not ignore the potential destruction of the two sites and recommended separate environmental studies.

During the hearing, Spitzer reiterated the board’s decision more than a year ago to restrict the county planning agency’s administrative discretion and to give supervisors a more “hands-on” approach to dealing with sensitive planning issues. He said the change would allow anyone who challenges planning decisions the opportunity to be heard by the board before planning moves on to the next phase.