NEWPORT BEACH : Eastbluff Developer to Fund Traffic Study

Ford Land Development Co. has agreed to pay for a traffic study and street improvements for the Eastbluff tract in exchange for a swift Planning Commission decision on a 500-home development.

Eastbluff residents at a hearing Thursday had no objections to the scope or design of Ford’s planned luxury home development on the 98-acre site of the defunct Loral Aeroneutronics plant, across Jamboree Road from Eastbluff.

But one commissioner and dozens of Eastbluff residents voiced fears that the Aeroneutronic Ford community would funnel excessive traffic onto Bison Avenue and through their neighborhood, which they say is already overrun with cross-town travelers going to shopping centers and Corona del Mar High School.

“The question is: How much, if any, of the traffic from this project would exacerbate the Eastbluff intrusion problem?” said Commissioner Garold Adams.

Initially he asked for a car count of motorists leaving Belcourt, a neighborhood next to the Ford site, and going through Eastbluff. But he relented when Ford attorney Robert Paone said the developer would pay for a separate traffic study for Eastbluff and pay for barriers to redirect traffic entering and exiting Eastbluff.

The commission recommend 5 to 0 that the City Council approve a preliminary environmental study for the project. Commissioner Tod Ridgeway was absent and Commissioner Mitchell Brown abstained because his wife, an environmental engineer, worked on the environmental study.

Site cleanup was also an issue. Representatives of several Belcourt homeowner groups asked for--and received--assurances that carcinogenic chemicals on the site would be fully cleared and that surface and ground water quality would be monitored throughout the project.

Groundbreaking could come as early as May, and the neighborhood would fully built by 2000, Ford project director Tim Ridner said.