The Space Race

Gently dabbing a small canvas with his painter’s brush, artist Michael Obermeyer stood on the side of Oso Parkway one day last spring, peering below at the rolling glen, lush and fragrant from that season’s rains.

Though in no hurry to finish his small painting, there was clearly an urgency to his work: “I have to paint it while I can; it probably won’t be here much longer,” he said.

Today, barely two seasons later, the work trucks and cranes have moved into Obermeyer’s blissful canyon paradise that at one time stretched unspoiled from Rancho Santa Margarita clear down to San Juan Capistrano. Now it’s a part of plans for a toll road.

Once, open spaces and wide stretches of farmland were part of Orange County’s image, just as noteworthy as clean air and smooth beaches. But that image is slowly fading. Acre by acre, open space in Orange County is disappearing, in some cases, such as farmland, more drastically than anywhere in Southern California.

As of 1996, only 38% of Orange County was undeveloped, compared with an average of 61% in other Southern California counties, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments. Three-fourths of Ventura County is undeveloped and half of Los Angeles County is open, although much of it is unbuildable land in the mountains and high desert.

But there is still room for growth in Orange County. Although more than 100,000 acres are off-limits to development--either public wilderness or parkland set aside by developers--they account for only 20% of the overall county.

A recent Times Orange County poll found that many residents want more of the county’s undeveloped land protected: Two-thirds believe there will not be enough open space to meet their needs 10 years from now. That number jumps to 73% in South County, where most of the building is planned or underway.

“People are coming to understand that open space is not just for animals,” said Pete DeSimone, manager of the National Audubon Society’s 4,000-acre Starr Ranch Sanctuary in Trabuco Canyon. “It’s of significant importance to their daily lives.”

Open land is so important that 64% said they would be willing to forgo the current strong economy if more growth meant losing open space and environmental quality in the future.

“People adamantly oppose giving up anything in the areas of environment and open space for the sake of the economy,” said Cheryl Katz of Baldassare Associates, which conducted the poll for The Times. “People have dire feelings about the future of open space.”

The Measure of Quality of Life

For Southern Californians, quality of life has always been measured in open space: parklands, nature preserves, coastal beaches and inland bays, farms and orchards, uncultivated land conservancies. But they also want jobs, housing and stores.

“I like suburbia. I like having my Starbucks down the street,” said Marilori Harbin of Lake Forest, one of those who took part in the survey. “But I also like to see the mountains in the background.”

To rescue and protect scarce open spaces, initiatives, partnerships and plans have been hatched and developers and conservation groups have worked together on historic agreements to set aside natural habitats.

“Long term, there will be huge relief from development,” said Larry Thomas, a spokesman for the Irvine Co., the county’s largest private landowner and the nation’s largest developer of planned communities. It continues to develop the Irvine Ranch, which in the late 1880s consisted of more than 110,000 acres.

The Irvine Co. has committed more than 35,000 acres of its property to open spaces. “Roughly a third of our land is going to end up as some kind of open space, either as park, habitat or nature conservancy, by the time the ranch is built out,” Thomas said.

Nearly 18,000 acres of Orange County open space were converted to urban uses between 1984 and 1996--an area the size of Santa Ana developed at a rate of about four acres a day, according to the state Department of Conservation’s farmland mapping and monitoring program.

Now, mammoth new communities consisting of thousands of houses each--as many as 8,100 in a single development called Ladera in south Orange County--are about to go up. And new highways could open more land to construction.

“The pitiful fact of life is that most of the open space we see here in Orange County is already spoken for and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Thomas Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher and one-time leader of the county’s “sensible growth” movement who now is writing a book on county politics.

“For most of what you see, it’s just a fleeting fantasy to think that space can be preserved,” he said. “It’s going to be developed.”

Most of Farmland Quickly Lost

As recently as 1996, state maps show splotches of rich, dark green marking the last plots of Orange County’s bounty of “prime” farmland, which has the best combination of physical and chemical features. Today, much of the prime farmland is sprouting its final crop: houses and apartments.

“Agricultural land is easy to develop,” said Jeanne Winnick, a spokesman for the conservation department. “It’s level, it’s flat, you’re not tearing out trees, you’re not blasting through hills.”

In 1982, farmland accounted for 32% of Orange County’s 798 square miles, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. By 1992, it dropped to 12%. Estimates show the county has lost 20,000 more acres of farmland since 1992, meaning the land left for cultivation and grazing now accounts for just 8% of the county.

The depletion can take its toll in many ways.

The mere existence of nearby open spaces, hosting flocks of migrating birds and fields of chirping crickets while offering undisturbed vistas, is mentally soothing to residents and commuters alike. They feel they live in a place where there’s still room to stretch.

Once it vanishes, so does the mental escape hatch.

“When people see open space disappear, it’s a psychological indicator that things are changing,” said Scott Bollens, chairman of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UC Irvine. “It’s a confirmation that development has arrived.”

Even for those who never go for a hike or on a bird-watching expedition, or who don’t jog through the trail system, open space is something to be prized, Bollens said.

“Most people in South County don’t want open space to play on it or recreate in it, but because the fact that it’s there means we’re not becoming like L.A.”

Psychological Factors at Play

People relate to accessible open space as if it’s their place in history, experts said. It’s important to have, even if it isn’t used each day.

“The longing for open space isn’t so much a matter of people wanting to use it as it is a conception of a county being something other than wall-to-wall housing,” said Mark Baldassare, UC Irvine professor of urban and regional planning. “America in general values open space, smaller communities and a rural feel.”

And when the bean field across the road becomes a strip mall, the roadway bulging from two lanes to six or eight, people feel a sense of loss, even if they never plucked a bean from its vines.

Said Bollens: “It means the loss of acreage, but the bigger thing is it means growth is unstoppable.”

Marilori Harbin sees the change as she looks out her back window, anxious for the serenity the view provides but worried about the shifting scenery.

“I see Saddleback Mountain and I see Rancho Santa Margarita,” she said. “Pretty soon, all I’m going to be seeing is houses. Little by little, it just seems the pretty hillsides are being taken over by Mediterranean-style houses with red clay roofs.”

Watching Growth ‘Take Over’

Harbin, who has lived in Orange County for 16 years, 11 of them in Lake Forest, said the new growth and the disappearance of open spaces are frequent topics of conversation among neighbors and friends. But Harbin stops short of advocating a moratorium on building of any kind.

“Slowly but surely, you see the growth take over,” she said. “But now that I’m here in my home, it’s easy to say that I don’t want any more houses going up.”

For artist Obermeyer, who has painted many Orange County landscapes before they faded into suburbia, the construction of the last stretch of the Foothill toll road through the open land south of Oso Parkway would mean a farewell of sorts. The artist said he probably won’t be back to paint the altered landscape.

“We’d all like to see an end to the overdevelopment,” he said.

There is a limit to growth. Even if home builders and shopping center magnates could consume every last acre of privately available land in Orange County, thousands of acres that are publicly owned or privately held but dedicated to conservation would remain.

Thousands of Acres Set Aside

The 424,000-acre Cleveland National Forest includes 54,577 acres along the eastern border of Orange County. The state maintains beaches, natural areas and the 2,800-acre Crystal Cove State Park. The county owns more than 33,000 acres in parks, trails and wilderness areas.

And under the Natural Communities Conservation Planning program, some private landowners are agreeing to set aside thousands of acres in habitat reserves to avoid potential restrictive regulation of threatened and endangered species such as the California gnatcatcher, a songbird, and others.

“My child is a now a doctor who says she will never come back to Orange County to live because it’s gotten so miserable,” said Belinda Blacketer of Laguna Beach, who was active in the 1980s growth-limitation movement. “For a family that’s been here since 1913, let me tell you, that hurts.”

But developers in Orange County have shown a willingness to set aside open spaces in exchange for development agreements, or to avoid more endangered species regulations on lands outside the habitat reserves.

“I think we’ve been very farsighted in the county in assembling this land and planning its uses,” said Thomas of the Irvine Co. “We don’t have little pieces here and there. They abut one another. Wildlife can traverse from one piece of property to another.”

In 1996, the Irvine Co. agreed to commit 21,000 acres to a Natural Communities habitat preserve in central Orange County. Combined with other property, the overall preserve will leave 37,000 acres undeveloped.

A second Natural Communities program involving Rancho Mission Viejo LLC could preserve 41,000 to 48,000 acres in South County, if it happens.

Other developers are offering open space set asides, even apart from habitat protection programs, as inducements to communities to approve development agreements that guarantee their right to build.

The owners of Talega, a 5,000-home community outside San Clemente, have offered to concede a third of their land--about 1,100 acres--to open space. Ladera’s developers are offering 1,600 acres of open space and habitat.

Much Land Still at Stake

Ardent conservationists said thousands of preservable acres are yet at stake. DeSimone of the Audubon Society said there are still important open space issues to be decided in Orange County. They include coastal development projects and the fate of the Foothill South toll road, which would slice through the undeveloped land in South County and invite more intensive development. Environmentalists oppose it.

“In Orange County, the south part of the county is the last frontier for us,” said DeSimone of the Audubon Society, referring to about 30,000 South County acres that are privately owned but still unplanned. “There is national park potential here, and it’s such an asset to the county.”

But cattle rancher Rogers is among those who think the set-asides are insufficient.

“People don’t quite realize that there’s really nothing left and they wouldn’t be able to save it if there was,” he said.

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Fewer Green Acres

More than 100,000 of the county’s 503,000 acres are off-limits to development, but new housing and business projects continue to eat away at open space.

Source: California Department of Conservation, the Irvine Co.

Feeling squeezed

A recent Times poll showed that 66% of residents felt there wouldn’t be enough open space to meet their needs in 10 years, with an even higher percentage of South County residents feeling that way.

* Ten years from now, do you think there will be enough, just enough or not enough open space in Orange County to suit your needs?

*--*

Total North South More than enough 4% 4% 3% Just enough 27% 30% 21% Not enough 66% 64% 73% Don’t know 3% 2% 3%

*--*

* Do you want the county’s current strong economy to continue even if it means a loss of open space and environmental quality in the future?

Yes: 31%

No: 64%

Don’t know: 5%

* Ten years from now, do you think Orange County will be more like the city of Los Angeles, or will it still be a suburban region like it is today?

More like L.A.: 43%

Still suburban: 54%

Don’t know: 3%

Source: Times Orange County Poll

About the Poll

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Baldassare Associates. The random telephone survey of 600 adult Orange County residents was conducted July 23-26. The sample reflects the demographic characteristics of adult Orange County residents. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minues 4% at the 95% confidence level. That means the results are within 4 percentage points of what they would be if all adults in Orange County were interviewed. For subgroups, such as regions, the margin of error would be larger. For registered voters, the margin of error is plus or minus 5%.

About the Series

Beyond 2000 is a series of articles that explore how our lives will change in the next millennium. The series will continue every Monday through the end of 1998 as The Times Orange County examines what’s in store for the county in such areas as transportation, education, growth and technology.

On The Internet

The Beyond 2000 series and an interactive discussion are available on the Times Orange County Edition’s Web site at https://www.timesoc.com/HOME/NEWS/ORANGE/beyond.htm