PLACENTIA : Planners Optimistic Over Large Projects

Despite the recession, Placentia planners are optimistic that several large-scale residential projects in the east end of the city will begin construction this year, with others being built in the next few years.

One developer has already begun grading for a 221-home project, and several others are likely to begin work sometime this year, planners say. The City Council recently approved $2.5 million to provide streets, roads and a new storm channel for the area, all to be paid through Mello-Roos assessment fees. And this week, a neighborhood shopping center will come before the Planning Commission.

About a half dozen developers have gained approval for projects that could add more than 800 homes by the end of the decade, but several say they will delay construction until the housing market improves.

“The economy kind of flattened out and nothing’s happening,” Senior Planner Christopher Becker said. “But they seem eager to go. . . . They’re just kind of waiting.”

Nearly all of the new tracts will be built on 400 acres of former oil fields, some of the last undeveloped land in Placentia.

In the project that has gone ahead, the Fieldstone Co. of Newport Beach has begun its 221-home tract on a 60-acre site at Alta Vista and Van Buren streets, Becker said.

“We’re moving ahead as fast as we possibly can,” said Julie Hutchinson, a sales manager for Fieldstone, which plans to have its first model homes completed in June. “It’s a very old, established area that people love.”

Hutchinson said the company has 500 prospective buyers on their “interest list,” including many residents of the city seeking newer homes.

The Fieldstone homes will be part of the East Placentia master-planned community, a collection of tracts to be built in an area roughly bounded by Orangethorpe Avenue to the south, Rose Drive on the west, Buena Vista Street on the north and Van Buren Street on the east.

A new shopping center to serve the neighborhood will go before the Planning Commission this week. The Unocal Land and Development Co. is proposing the project for the southeast corner of Rose Drive and Buena Vista Street. It is trying to lure a supermarket chain and drugstore to the 160,000-square-foot site.

The city plans a 14-acre park for the East Placentia area that would cost about $3.5 million and include two Little League fields, a regulation-size baseball field, two soccer fields, a basketball court, snack-bar facilities and a day-care center, said Robert Hodson, director of public works.

Also in the East Placentia area, planners said that two other developers are likely to begin construction this year of their own tracts. Brock Homes plans to build 95 single-family dwellings on 18 acres, and Sand Dollar Development Co. plans a 141-unit condominium complex on a similar size site. Both are in the east end of the city.

Other projects that could go ahead at any time are planned for elsewhere in the city. Another master-planned community, approved in 1988, would be just south of Alta Vista Country Club, near Chapman and Central avenues. The largest project, to be built by Saddleback Development, would include about 95 single-family homes and 139 condominiums.

In addition, A.M. Homes plans 121 single-family homes and 75 condominiums on a 30-acre site. The tracts will be part of a master-planned area on the north end of the golf course that was approved in 1980.