Whispering Hills Rolls Along

Whispering Hills, an upscale housing tract proposed for the eastern edge of San Juan Capistrano, won City Council approval this week, but the shouting may not be over.

In making its decision, to be finalized June 4, the council went against a staff recommendation and acted just a week after receiving a Planning Commission report on the project.

“After four years of watching and studying this issue, if you didn’t have a good handle on it by Tuesday night, then you weren’t going to,” Councilman David M. Swerdlin said. “I don’t know if waiting would have benefited anybody.”

But Mark Nielsen, whose group Citizens Against Uncontrolled San Juan Expansion has fought Whispering Hills since its inception four years ago, said the council, which voted 3 to 1 for the development, should have taken more time to digest the Planning Commission’s report and the latest public testimony.

The citizens group, which says it has 1,000 members on its mailing list, maintains that the 356-acre hillside development at La Pata Avenue and Ortega Highway will worsen traffic, destroy back country and endanger wildlife.

“We have a number of alternatives we’ll look at,” Nielsen said this week of the project, which will include 175 homes and the town’s first high school in 40 years. “The options range from lawsuits to ballot referendums.”

Capistrano Union High School, a block from the historic mission in the center of town, was closed in 1963 because it was outdated and small. Since then, students have attended high schools in other cities.

Swerdlin said a lawsuit would simply delay construction of the new school, scheduled to open in September 2005. Capistrano Unified School District officials say San Juan Hills High is being built to ease overcrowding in the district’s five high schools: Aliso Niguel, Capistrano Valley, Dana Hills, San Clemente and Tesoro.

“If they decide to sue, I think a lot of people will consider that as being against the high school,” he said. “I think the community overall would suffer,” and classrooms would remain overcrowded.

Swerdlin had questioned his own eligibility to vote on the issue because he had worked with Whispering Hills development consultant Phil Schwartze on other projects. On Monday, the state Fair Political Practices Commission ruled that he could participate.

Mayor Diane Bathgate, an urban planner, abstained because she prepared a report for Capistrano Unified about the proposed school site. Councilman John Gelff, who favored a smaller development, cast the dissenting vote.

The number of units approved by the council--160 in the east canyon and 15 in the west canyon--was less than the 193 that the developer wanted but 72 more than Nielsen’s group was urging.