Will City Bail Out Developers?
by Bo Klein

Steadfast and/or Target is apparently talking with the city again about its housing plans at Jeronimo and Los Alisos. What will the city’s stance be?

When the developer first approached the city in 2003 with a proposal for 800 affordable apartments on the 23-acre site, it was banking on taxpayer dollars from the county as well as city redevelopment funds. The developer was interfering in the free market, which has now come back to bite it. The developer got its housing plan approved in 2005 and was hit with a lawsuit in 2006. The lawsuit against Steadfast is still on the council’s closed-session agenda. As if Steadfast didn’t have enough other problems, the housing market began its decline.

Steadfast partnered with Target in 2005 for a mixed-use project, retail and residential, which the council approved. Mission Viejo is a tough city, demographically and structurally, to convert to mixed-use. For openers, outsiders don’t understand this planned community. Mission Viejo has a solid General Plan worth defending. Developed by the Mission Viejo Company, it became a prototype nationwide.

The Target store, adding a new retail tax base, is much more “on Target” with what the Planning Commission determined in 2003 as the most suitable, long-term successful zoning. The parcel at Jeronimo and Los Alisos is not suitable for flighty, real estate speculation with projects combining high-density housing adjacent to a big-box store. As a former city planning commissioner who participated in the 2003 recommendation to deny housing development, it is somewhat gratifying to know our zoning decisions, though somewhat compromised, were basically sound, and the developer’s plans were not.

I’m concerned about what’s happening behind closed doors at City Hall. The city has no reason to bail out developers who were “off Target” from day one. Does the developer/property owner now have another get-rich plan? Bring the daylight back, and inform the public of any proposed scheme the developer may have to bail itself out, possibly at the expense of Mission Viejo.