Trabuco Canyon Water District Vs. Dove Canyon Plaze Rezone

Things are moving quickly now with the William Lyon (WL) request to rezone Dove Canyon Plaza (DCP) to high density housing. WL has a history of misrepresenting the facts, in one of my previous articles, I showed how they tried to give the impression they'd been meeting and working with SAMLARC, but the CEO of SAMLARC said that never happened. In another previous article we saw that the city had kicked back the application for missing and incorrect information, a large part of that had to do with the Trabuco Canyon Water District (TCWD) who has an arrangement with the DCP for parking and the entrance/exit, part of it read:

The proposal includes adjusting the property line between the project site and the Trabuco Canyon Water District site. Additionally, this request will require an adjustment to the boundaries of the General Plan Land Use Designation and Zoning for the Water District Property. Accordingly, the following shall be completed:

1. Include the Water District property in the Tract Map and all site improvement and landscape plans.
2. Provide a letter of authorization from the Trabuco Canyon Water District authorizing you to act on their behalf for this application.

The letter from the city to WL was dated August 21, 2019 and on August 22, 2019 the TCWD had this page up. The important part is a link on that page which goes to the letter from the TCWD lawyer to Principal Planner Wendy Starks at the city, which can be read in full here. You really should read the whole thing to understand the full background, I'll excerpt a short bit of the letter here, but basically, without cooperation from TCWD, I don't see how this project can happen, it certainly can't happen in its current state and what is especially appalling is that WL looked like they were just going to try and bulldog their way through this, they hadn't even met with TCWD in any meaningful way and simply submitted their plans to the city. Here is the excerpt:

* The District has significant concerns relative to the proposed Development Project in light of the terms of the Reciprocal Agreement. In particular, the District is concerned with the availability of reciprocal parking and the impacts on vehicle access rights on the Dove Canyon Plaza Property necessary to provide reasonable public access and attendance to District Board meetings, including, but not limited to, public hearing events that take place in the District's Boardroom. The District is also concerned that the lack of parking and vehicle access may limit the use of the District's Board Meeting Room and related facilities for other public and private entities and events, which include homeowners association boards, community events and similar activities. The District is of the view that these events, and public access thereto, are of significant value to the local community.

* The District is also concerned about access to the District Property given the current proposal of the Development Project to be a private gated community. The District presumes that as a private gated community, public access tot he property currently utilized as Dove Canyon Plaza would be restricted or potentially prohibited. The compatibility of such a community, given the terms of the District's public access requirements and the terms of the Reciprocal Agreement, is a question that needs to be carefully considered.

Remember, WL was already 43 parking spaces short of what was required for their initial design, which was already crammed in there. Also remember, tying this back to the TCA (toll roads), they will get $500,000 in developer fees if this plan is built, and continue to remember that councilman Tony Beall sits on the board of the TCA and has been strongly advocating against any outside review of the TCA finances and contracts that have been exposed as being a problem. Also remember (yes, a lot of things to remember) that WL will talk about how retail is dying and the center is dying, however it isn't a retail center, it is a services center, retail is not relevant and the only reason the center is starting to have more vacancies is because they aren't signing leases or will only agree to very short leases, so who wants to take that chance?

We hope that sharing this information with the community will help convince councilpersons Beall, Gamble and Figueroa that approving this rezone is a bad idea and we can put an end to it sooner rather than later, before more hard working people have their livelihoods destroyed.