Slow-Growth Measure Gone but Not Forgotten

Although Orange County voters defeated the slow-growth initiative, the measure has sent a strong message of discontent that is likely to change forever the rules of development in the county, business executives said Wednesday.

It is a message that government officials and developers “better not ignore, or they’ll be facing another slow-growth initiative next year,” said Marilyn Tipping, vice president for new home sales and marketing at Great Western Real Estate.

While it is too early to tell exactly what form the changes will take, business leaders say that future development projects must be more closely tied to improvements in the transportation system and that local governments must work together--and with developers--to ensure quality regional planning.

Already, county supervisors had appointed a committee to develop a growth control plan similar in some respects to the provisions of the initiative. That approach was endorsed Wednesday by the county’s two largest landowners, the Irvine Co. and Rancho Santa Margarita Co.

Tipping, who was active in the campaign to defeat the initiative, said that the “election results don’t mean the issue of growth control in Orange County, or in the state, is dead. They just provide the lull before the storm.”

Such sentiments came through clearly in interviews with business people from a cross-section of industries following defeat of the measure in Tuesday’s election.

“Perhaps the initiative will bring to attention the need to build more freeways and alternate routes for people to commute to work,” said Don Palmquist, president of Yamaha Electronics USA in Buena Park. “In that sense, it’s been successful.”

One thing the defeat of Measure A probably won’t do, however, is relieve the upward pressure on housing and land prices in the county.

No Construction Surge

Many in the real estate business believe that demand for homes and commercial properties is so great, and fear of continuing efforts to clamp down on growth so strong, that prices will continue to rise at above-average rates.

And defeat of the initiative is not expect to cause a sudden surge in housing construction, in part because many elected officials have been sensitized to the political consequences of ignoring public concerns about growth.

In the unincorporated areas of the county, developers already have permission to build 65,000 units over the next seven years, and county officials estimate that an additional 25,000 houses will be approved between now and 1995. That works out to only about 12,000 units a year--about the same level as built in 1987.

According to the California Assn. of Realtors, the median price of an existing home in Orange County reached $198,031 in April, the highest in the state.

‘Land Rush’ Is On

Robert Bell, vice president for appraisal services at Coldwell Banker, said that finished residential lots have appreciated $10,000 since January, “and that’s twice the rate of appreciation for 1987.” He said part of the increase was caused by a demand for land from builders who feared that Measure A would pass and clamp a lid of the amount of land that could be developed.

Bell also likened the pre-election demand for commercial property to a “land rush” and said property owners “have not been shy about raising the prices of their lots.”

Those prices are not likely to drop, said Thomas Hammond, president of the Hammond Co., a major mortgage banker.

“I see no lessening of price pressures right now,” he said. “The supply of homes coming on the market is down from what it should be, and we have an extraordinary job explosion in Orange County, in all of Southern California, and people want homes.”

Besides, said Tipping, the city of San Diego has instituted its own growth controls and Riverside County voters have qualified an initiative for the November ballot that would slash housing permits there by 75% a year. Those pressures are driving up prices not only in San Diego and Riverside, but are propping up the higher prices in Orange County, she said.

Disappointment Shown

Some of the strongest post-election support for increased government and private industry efforts to resolve traffic congestion and other problems fueling the slow growth movement came from those, like Tipping, whose businesses are closely tied to development, and who were largely in opposition to Measure A.

The measure, Tipping said, shows “a disappointment in the legislative process, a feeling that elected officials haven’t handled growth as they should have. . . . The whole state was watching what was happening in Orange County,” she said. “If Measure A had passed, it would have lighted a fire all over the state.”

Hammond, who opposed the measure, said he believes that slow-growth forces “are going to come at us (the development industry) again because there is a fundamental infrastructure problem in Orange County. I don’t think the industry has its act together, and if we don’t get it together, we will be taking this on again next year.”

Developers and government officials “would be foolish to ignore that there is a feeling of discontent in the populace,” said Roger Mobley, vice president and head of planning for the Keith Co., a Newport Beach residential developer.

“People believe that the governmental process hasn’t solved the problems, and we can’t forget this.”

Mobley said he believes that “it will be easier to address the problems without having Measure A” to contend with. The initiative’s defeat, he said, “gives us more flexibility to deal with growth-related problems. It is through proper planning and development that we will solve things, not through stopping development.”

‘Cooperative Approach’

The key, he said, is to improve regional planning and control. “There’s a message here, and it is that we have to come up with better cooperative solutions to traffic and other infrastructure problems. . . . We have all these small cities, and the small jurisdictions want control over their own destiny, so we end up with fractionalized government. We have to get back to a regional, cooperative approach.”

Three of the biggest landowners in the county--all of whom opposed the initiative--said Tuesday’s election gives them breathing room to build more roads and defuse the slow-growth sentiment the county’s tangled traffic has engendered.

The vote “proves Orange County residents want real transportation solutions, not empty solutions,” said Santa Margarita Co. President Anthony R. Moiso, an outspoken critic of the initiative.

One approach Moiso supports is the committee appointed by the supervisors to hammer out a program of more stringent growth controls. The supervisors could later amend this program, unlike the initiative.

The Irvine Co., which maintained a lower profile than Santa Margarita Co. during the campaign, said it, too, supports the county plan.

“We as a company believe what we’ve done on our land already represents growth management in the best sense of the word,” said Larry Thomas, vice president for corporate communications.

‘Time to Fix the Roads’

At Mission Viejo Co., another major landowner, President Harvey Stearn said the defeat of the initiative does not mean “it’s going to be business as usual.”

“I regard this as a breather. This will give us some time to fix the roads. It’s quite obvious to everyone we have a major traffic problem, and the initiative has sensitized everybody to the fact we’ve got to do something.”

Stearn said Mission Viejo Co.’s solution to traffic problems was two major development agreements with the county allowing thousands of new homes on the land if builders provide new roads and other facilities.

Slow-growth backers regard the agreements as too lenient and have sued to overturn them.

Developers aren’t the only people who place most of the blame for creating the current traffic situation on government, and who say government has to take the lead in curing the crunch.

William Conlin, president of CalComp in Anaheim, a computer systems maker, said he believes that “real estate developers, like the Irvine Co., are responsibly developing the land.”

He voted for Measure A, he said, because he wanted to do something “so the government would pay attention to the problems of traffic and pollution. The state, county and city governments all seem to be looking the other way on the issue.”

‘17 Miles an Hour’

“There are a lot of things that could be done, Conlin said. “Like controlling the hours that trucks are on the freeways, car pooling. . . . The situation already is at an intolerable level,” he said, adding that it took him three hours to drive from UCLA to his home in Newport Beach earlier this week. “That’s about 17 miles an hour!”

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however. Loren Carroll, chief financial officer for Smith International, the Newport Beach oil tool company, said he voted against the initiative because he believes that it would have weakened the area’s economy and because he does not believe that traffic here is unmanageable.

“Traffic is not a crisis, it is an inconvenience,” Carroll said. “It is a compromise you have to put up with if you want to live in a desirable area.”

On the other side of the issue is Peter Churm, chairman of Fluorocarbon Corp., an industrial components manufacturer with headquarters in Laguna Niguel.

Churm said he voted for the initiative “even though I thought it was poorly conceived and poorly written, because I thought we had to send a message. . . . The rape of the county is well under way, and something has got to be done to start controlling it.”

Times staff writers Eric Schine, Michael Flagg and Eric Healy contributed to this report.