Our Master Plan Is a Masterpiece
by Ron Capizzi

Mission Viejo residents need to vote YES on Measure D to protect our masterpiece! (Master Planned Community)

My objective is to inform residents of the importance of standing up and keeping our community as it is! Our community has been completed, and nothing major needs to be rezoned by the City Council. Just spend our money maintaining the Master Plan – it’s our investment, and we like it as is.

My experience relative to the purpose of this letter:
I’ve lived in Mission Viejo for more than 35 years. Two months after buying a new home in Mission Viejo, I was hired by and reported only to the president, executive vice president and three vice presidents for the Mission Viejo Company. For almost a decade, I managed the entire marketing and advertising communications requirements for the company’s California developments in Fresno, Mission Viejo and Aliso Viejo, as well as in Tempe, Arizona, and two suburban projects in Denver, Colorado.

Why we feel so passionate on preserving our community:
Mission Viejo is a very unique community, conceived and developed by professional land planners (for almost every major phase or amenity required, producing detailed social/economical reports, density and traffic impact reports and extensive environmental impact reports), architectural engineers, geologists, marketing researchers, landscape designers and arborists, general contractors (earthen dam specialists), and etc., whose combined talents helped produce our master-planned 10,000-acre community.

Mission Viejo is unlike most cities and especially our neighboring cities of Lake Forest, Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel (Avco Financial Development tried to plan specific areas of Laguna Niguel but fell short and sold remaining land to individual builders), which have no formal master plans*. Like most cities, they just haphazardly evolve over time without much organized strategic residential support facilities and/or community amenities.

Our planned community is so impressively different from other less fortunate cities like Lake Forest, which is a good example of having both a dysfunctional internal and external struggle with a metamorphose image of self-identification (redevelopment of El Toro Rd). (Formerly the city was named El Toro, before residents voted to change the name. The new name evidently reflected a more impressive image. For those who don’t know, the name was taken from a housing development situated around two manmade lakes and a forest of eucalyptus trees).

In our master plan, the approved Spanish architectural parameter stood for the entire community, including the street names, street lights, Barcelona walls.
The amenities were strategically located from a major hospital, shopping centers, churches, three recreation centers, schools, fire stations, a mile-long lake with its own self-sustaining ecological system (89 feet deep at dam), two golf courses (one private championship and one public), custom-designed mission bell street lights, low-profile fire hydrants, underground utilities, Olive trees at Barcelona-walled main entrances into the community, planted center street medians and hillside slopes, nature areas/trails (Wilderness Glen and Oso Creek nature walk), playgrounds, soccer and baseball fields, recreation centers (one Olympic swimming pool), tennis courts and more.

A broad range of housing was offered to appeal to every socioeconomic level. This mixture (along with widely diverse and varied recreation amenities and community-involved support venues from the St Patrick Day and 4th of July parades, Christmas light decoration contest, Santa Claus’ arrival and etc.) are reasons our homes typically experience a much lower turnover ratio versus other cities. This mixture and balance encourage families to move up (and move down, as with empty nesters) within the community. 

As another community benefit, I have to put the truth out as to why MV is one the safest cities with regard to crime. In the early years, we nearly always rated having a low crime rate. After spending time researching the issue, we discovered buyers felt they were buying more than just a home in Mission Viejo. Because the company spent time/money developing and promoting the master planned community and encouraged personal community involvement after residents moved in, via newsletters mailings to each home and etc., it was determined the strength and pride combined with actual homeownership and a feeling of community ownership causes residents to help preserve the safety of their entire community, as would occur with any investment. This is the real reason why we have low crime rates. Not taking anything away from the Sheriff, but it’s a proven fact, police don’t prevent crimes, they just respond after crimes have been committed.

Our entire 10,000-plus Aegean Hills acres are completely developed** and we don’t require any major zoning changes. We are a special city, and any request to change our zoning should be enforced by a majority vote of residents.

Just a few comments on the 2005/6 rezoning of commercial property by the council:
I never heard whether or not the city required detailed studies that addressed such issues as the following: What effect does the changed zoning have on specific adjoining properties? How is the Unisys Corporate property affected by the adjacent rezoning? What about a Traffic Study? Environmental Impact Report?

After zoning changed (on the property at Jeronimo and Los Alisos), the parcel was reconfigured by grading levels and sharp increase in degree of infill slope angles facing Los Alisos and a vertical increase infill, raising the grade level directly behind the buildings in the Jeronimo shopping center. These are both issues that need to be explained by city engineers. How and why were these grading codes changed and allowed, especially, since the community has a history of major slope failures? Were adjoining property owners given the opportunity to voice their concerns? When and if the multifamily portion of this parcel ever materializes, the influx of auto traffic at the intersection of Jeronimo and Los Alisos is going to be hectic. Two access streets and two traffic lights were added on both Los Aliso and Jeronimo within 200 feet of the intersection light. Can you image what the 5:00 pm drive-home traffic at this intersection is going to be like when the multifamily project is completed and occupied?

What effects will the addition of almost 300 people living above the Jeronimo shopping center have on the specific area below and the entire community as a whole?

It just takes three people – the council majority – to undo millions of dollars and hours of hard work it took to create MV. It is now being destroyed brick by brick by three people.

The first bad decision made by a MV city council was demolishing the Barcelona wall, removing the Olive Trees and jamming the City Hall and Library and a parking lot into the hillside at La Paz and Marguerite. This was the beginning, and they have continued ignoring our master plan. That council not only slapped our face by approving a totally foreign architectural style, but to add insult to injury, they removed the Barcelona wall and jammed those buildings into the heart of our community’s center. I remember some people at the time were reported saying, “the City Council picked a horrible architectural style for the Library and City Hall here, and it looks so out of place, like a 1940 World War II airplane hanger with flagstones.”

The next bad decision by the council affected the parcel across the street when they allowed the former gas station to be removed along with demolishing the second Barcelona wall and approved a similar non-Spanish architecture multistory commercial building to be built on the corner of La Paz and Marguerite. They also allowed a front parking lot for the building with direct access facing Marguerite Parkway.

The master plan specifies not allowing businesses, especially gas stations and fast food restaurants, to be located at corner intersections and front-facing streets because certain businesses would negatively impact the visual enhancement of landscaped planted intersections. This is why all gas stations were reversed on each respective corner and Carl’s Jr. on La Paz and Marguerite face into the shopping center. McDonalds was allowed to face Trabuco because it was at a lower grade level, but it was made to put its drive-through in the back and back side of the main structure.

If I owned the Arco gas station at the northeast corner of La Paz and Marguerite, I would demand to have the Barcelona wall and community billboard removed so I could turn my gas station pumps around to face the intersection. What’s preventing all corner gas station owners in Mission Viejo from demanding facing access to their respected corners? When Councilman John Paul Ledesma was involved in the sale of the Mobil gas station property at the corner of Jeronimo and Los Alisos, why didn’t he inform the buyers (Sonic Drive-In) that their drive-in parking stalls could not be situated in a position that could be seen from the intersection? This is a perfect example of what the master plan was trying to prevent. What a disgraceful appearance that corner now presents! What about the McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr. demanding the city allow them to turn their businesses around to front-face the intersections? Once you stop playing by the rule book (master plan), it becomes a haphazard disarray of jammed-together buildings, no continuity, no common look. And that’s when we begin looking like every typical USA City. Bit by bit, the city isn’t even maintaining the framework holding together our Masterpiece. Why isn’t the city replacing the Olive Trees with Olive Trees? The city’s answer to this question was maintenance cost and spraying for disease. 

Residents of Mission Viejo, our community has been completely developed in accord with the Master Plan. All space has been accounted for with a few exceptions.* *

Last point: Look at the list opposing measure D, including current and former MV city council members. This simply says these current members don’t want to accept the fact they won’t have this authority to rezone, and it’s hurting their egos. Past members don’t really care, but their egos enjoy mention by name on campaign mailers opposing Measure D. Most of the others are business people and business groups, and it’s quite obvious why they are opposed to measure D. It will delay or prevent them from destroying existing amenities or crowding existing space with expansion requirements of which it’s easier to convince three people vs. a majority (50 percent plus one vote) of the voters. 

Protect our investment - don’t let three people destroy any more of our cherished planned community. It took an army of professionals to create your California Promise: Vote YES on D

Note: The following are interesting points of fact you probably never knew.

*Aliso Viejo, formerly the Moulton Ranch is another planned community developed by the Mission Viejo Company. It ended up getting “short changed,” compared to Mission Viejo, with less of everything. The ranch was almost 7,000 acres, but after the environmentalists, schools, tollway, open space requirements and etc., we were left with less than half the original acreage to develop. This forced the company to build higher density housing units and fewer community amenities to help offset the value lost. This is the reason why Aliso Viejo has so many multifamily housing units.

*Rancho Santa Margarita, Ladera Ranch and etc., are planned communities of Rancho Mission Viejo. Tony Moiso represented his Uncle Richard O’Neil while he learned about the business of master planned communities by working for the Mission Viejo Company. In 1980 when negotiations between his Uncle Richard, Phil Reilly and other Mission Viejo Company executives regarding the purchase of additional acres of Rancho Mission Viejo broke down, Tony convinced his Uncle Richard that, with his knowledge, they could develop the remaining acres of the Ranch themselves. So, in 1985-86, their first phase was announced called Santa Margarita. It was later changed to Rancho Santa Margarita because a city north of Santa Barbara is named Santa Margarita, which resulted in a complaint. I had the pleasure/opportunity to work in producing the marketing plan for Rancho Santa Margarita for my old friend, the former Vice President of the Rancho Santa, Margarita Co., Don Moe and with another consultant. Maybe that’s why you see so many similarities to Mission Viejo. We used the same Spanish dictionary in naming street there too! (After using most of the O’Neill and Moiso family names.)

**The vacant hillside property facing Los Alisos, between Via Noveno and Vista Del Largo, is vacant for a reason. The Mission Viejo Company conducted soil tests prior to grading the hillside. After core sample drilling was conducted, geologists reported the hillside had many geological fissures, making the hill unstable and unbuildable. This is why the company was eager to swap ownership of this property with the city-owned parcel in the southern portion. I informed Bob Curtis, one of the first city council members in 1989, of the unstable hill and he said he would have it noted on the records. A few years ago I contacted the city’s building department and made certain this hillside instability was noted on correlating planning area maps. Let’s also keep this property (somehow) from becoming developed.