Locking gates would open the door to more

The latest attempt to create a gated community inside Yorba Linda has come up against a long-standing but unwritten policy against establishing exclusive enclaves in the city.

Planning commissioners turned down a request from the owners of 59 properties in the Kerrigan Ranch Manor House development to install a gate at the entrance to their homes off Bastanchury Road between Lakeview Avenue and Fairmont Boulevard.

Homeowners cited traffic and liability due to the unlighted private streets in the area of acre-sized lots as reasons for limiting access.

The residents appealed the commission’s denial to the City Council, but late last month they asked that a scheduled public hearing be “postponed indefinitely.”

Policy regarding gated communities “has evolved over the last decade or so,” City Planner David Brantley noted in a four-page report prepared for council members.

Gated communities “are separated from one another, contrary to the ideal elaborated in the city’s motto The Land of Gracious Living,” Brantley wrote.

“Gating of neighborhoods conveys a sense of insecurity or necessity to prevent criminal activity, which inaccurately characterizes…Yorba Linda,” he added.

The Manor House homes are part of a tract that was planned as a gated community by developer Brighton Homes in 1990; but after Pulte Homes acquired the land, a city design review noted that a future entrance gate would need a conditional use permit.

The Planning Commission denied the homeowners’ request for a permit in January by finding, “There are not any special circumstances…that would warrant an exception.”

According to Brantley, the city has three major exceptions to the no-gate policy: the 97-lot Fairmont Terrace community, the 75-lot Bryant Ranch Legacy and the 168-lot North Yorba Linda Estates Site A.

Fairmont Terrace was allowed a gate because Village Center Drive dead ends into the development, and the Bryant Ranch homes were permitted a gate because of potential criminal activity from the Riverside (91) Freeway access ramps at Gypsum Canyon Road.

The North Yorba Linda Estates Site A homes are allowed a gate if the public high school and football stadium are constructed--as proposed--directly across Bastanchury Road from the entrance to the development.

In the Manor House case, the commission’s denial resolution appropriately states that a “precedent-setting approval for gated access without special circumstances…would significantly erode the city’s ability to preserve the…open community character the city has aspired to and guarded for so many years.”

And, according to Brantley, if a Manor House gate was approved, the city could expect gate requests from other neighborhoods, such as San Lorenzo west of Manor House and Canterbury, Inverness, Augusta and The Links in the Vista Del Verde development.

Also, several smaller neighborhoods with private streets on both sides of Yorba Linda Boulevard between Lakeview and Palm avenues could request gates, Brantley advised.

A FINAL NOTE

Yorba Linda and Orange County water district officials, who recently went to court in a dispute over 1899 and 1970 Bryant Ranch water documents, are now working to annex 2,732 acres of northern and eastern YLWD land into OCWD.

An annexation provision sought by OCWD, which manages the area’s groundwater supplies, asks YLWD to reimburse OCWD for $290,000 legal costs incurred in the suit.

YLWD says there’s “no legal, historical or policy basis for this proposed charge,” but they’ll discuss it “in the interest of an open dialogue.”