Nakase Nursery Site Gets OK for Nearly 800 Homes

The Lake Forest City Council on Tuesday voted 5-0 to approve the rezoning of the 126-acre Nakase Brothers Nursery to residential and sign off on a nearly 800-home development for Toll Brothers.

The vote covered everything all at once. With minimal discussion -- there were the odd questions here and there for City staffers but very little vetting of the actual project -- Mayor Neeki Moatazedi, mayor pro tem Michael James, Dwight Robinson, Mark Tettemer and Scott Voigts fell in line with what detractors have been saying for years, that it was a done deal.

It will include about $28 million in total developer fees for the City, including $2.5 million for roads.

Supporters, many of them wearing green pro-Nakase stickers, outnumbered dissenters 29-3 in the public comments.

Notably, Moatazedi and Tettemer -- who are employed by The Gas Company and the Irvine Ranch Water District, both of which will provide services to the development -- didn't even acknowledge a request to recuse themselves for having a conflict of interest in which they would have to choose between the City's interests or their employer's.

As well, there was no discussion of placing the future of the site on a ballot in November so that residents could make the decision and take the politics out of the decision -- that was another request that came from the public.

The one request from the public that did get some traction was a request for more affordable senior homes, and Moatazedi requested that be a consideration down the road.

Support for the project came primarily for three reasons: the need for housing in the area, a potential school on the site, and reduced traffic -- the latter being a bit murky in the way it was presented as an advantage.

Although several people, many of them young, spoke of the need for a home that they could purchase in Lake Forest, the homes themselves will be priced upwards of $1 million apiece and beyond, likely beyond the scope of first-time home buyers.

The building of a school is hardly a given, either. Even council members admitted that Saddleback Valley Unified School District was its own entity and couldn't be forced to build an elementary campus, but repeatedly urged those in attendance to encourage the district to do so. The district and Toll Brothers reached a memorandum of understanding in which the school has four years to make a decision on the school and, at that time, if it's a no-go the land would revert to Toll. If that happens, the project will grow to 776 units from 605 that includes 64 senior units.

As for the traffic, the presentation showed that the residential community would create 8,900 trips per day while a light industrial park would provide 23,000 daily trips. However, no one followed up on what one public speaker pointed out: residential traffic will be moving with drive-time traffic and create more one-way congestion while light residential would be moving in the opposite direction during rush hour; even though there would be more trips daily, it would impact rush hour traffic less. Not even the City's traffic engineer and consultant, Doug Anderson, made clear the distinction, only that "there's a substantial difference you don't normally see in projects," a stance that was misleading taking only trips into account and not flow.

Missing from the dialogue was the vision. One public speaker pointed out that the 88-acre Indian Wells Tennis Garden had a two-week tournament every year that in 2017 generated $206 million in direct economic impact and $406 million gross in the Coachella Valley. Such projects could be controlled through zoning if Lake Forest wanted something to put it on the map. It was pointed out that the City can build houses anywhere, but it will never get another chance to control usage of a 122-acre block to create something that would give drivers going through "the gateway to South Orange County" a reason to stop.

"There isn't going to be another 122 acres so (the decision) isn't going to be taken lightly," Moatazedi said before the vote. "This seems like a nice and promising project."

In addition to the homes, it will include seven parks, including a large and small dog park. It will be serviced by three entrances/exits, but only two that will allow ingress and egress in both directions.