Housing Plan Has Outsider Backing

The cowboy developers at Rancho Mission Viejo scoff at the suggestion that they are just another bunch of megabuilders. After all, they still swing lassos and herd cattle even as they drive along plans to build 14,000 more homes on their south Orange County spread.

A mailing blitz leading up to the company’s unveiling of its building plan Friday featured CEO Tony Moiso on horseback, reins in hand, assuring neighbors that his family-run operation is committed to staying true to its working-ranch roots.

“They are not just a family that happened to muddle on by,” said San Juan Capistrano Mayor Wyatt T. Hart. “They consider our city part of their home. They have been here longer than anyone else I know.”

So Hart was surprised to learn that it isn’t the family that holds many of the purse strings in the company’s latest, increasingly controversial development plan. It’s DMB Associates of Scottsdale, Ariz., a small partnership that builds luxury homes. It’s headed by Campbell’s Soup heir Bennett Dorrance, one of America’s richest men. And an outsider.

Not that it makes much difference to the mayor. “I’m dealing with the family,” he said flatly.

Yet others are wondering aloud whether the family is in full control of a development deal predicated on its ties to the environmentally sensitive land. They fear DMB may control more than just the money behind the development.

“South Orange County residents have to wonder whether a commitment to protecting open space will be sacrificed for the profit needs of an Arizona real estate developer,” said Bill Corcoran, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club, Angeles chapter.

“DMB just seems to build golf communities among the cactus of Arizona,” Corcoran said. “We have enough of that here. It is reasonable to ask how much power they wield behind the scenes.”

Rancho Mission Viejo officials said the family holds the controlling interest but would not disclose financial details.

“The family guides how decisions are made on the ranch,” said Diane Gaynor, spokeswoman for Rancho Mission Viejo. “To suggest anything else is preposterous.”

She and others said the Arizona partnership provides much-needed cash but does not get involved in day-to-day operations. Although not widely known among local officials, DMB has been a partner of Rancho Mission Viejo since 1996. Gaynor said DMB helped develop the Ladera Ranch community.

DMB officials also said they are keeping hands off. “It is their team and the family vision in the driver’s seat,” said Eneas Kane, vice president of DMB Associates. “We’re extremely careful never to interfere in the management of the project.

“It’s not accurate to say we never have opinions,” Kane said. “But all decisions are ultimately made by the family.”

It’s Environmentalists vs. Cowboys in Fliers

DMB’s involvement is not mentioned in the brochures that are landing in community mailboxes.

“They feel there will be less opposition to the good ol’ country boy,” said Tom Rogers, a slow-growth advocate in San Juan Capistrano who says the company should build fewer houses than the 14,000 proposed.

But environmentalists are trying to highlight the connection with a guerrilla marketing effort of their own: a doctored Campbell’s Soup label that says “Gnatcatcher Soup” over a picture of a dish featuring the endangered songbird. The image, circulating in e-mails and on fliers, was dismissed by the company as “offensive” and “a new low.”

And, although Dorrance is associated with Campbell’s, the soup company, has no connection with the Orange County development, Rancho Mission Viejo officials noted.

Rancho Mission Viejo has had other big-business partners before. Tobacco giant Philip Morris paid the company $52 million for 10,000 acres in 1972 and went on to develop what is now the city of Mission Viejo. Company officials later said they regretted not keeping control of that development.

Copley Real Estate Advisors of Boston took control of operations of the company’s development of Rancho Santa Margarita after sales took a dive in the mid-1990s.

DMB partnered with Rancho Mission Viejo to help it develop some of its remaining land soon after that; the Arizona group was described by Moiso as a sympathetic partner that would stick by him even if the economy went south again. Moiso said he is determined to keep control.

The Arizona partners helped design the 4,000-acre Ladera Ranch project, which opened last year in unincorporated South County. Some of Ladera was modeled after DMB’s 8,300-acre golf community called DC Ranch in Scottsdale, which is carved into neighborhoods where no two houses of the same design can be next to each other.

DMB also played a little-noticed role in one of Orange County’s largest publicly funded preservation deals in recent history.

DMB partnered with St. Clair Co. of Newport Beach to purchase 663 acres of Coal Canyon at a bargain price of $15 million in late 1997. The land--home to mountain lions and bobcats, and connected to a chain of wilderness areas stretching to San Diego County--had already been approved for building.

Three years later, the partnership sold the property for $40 million--nearly triple what it had paid--to a coalition of state agencies, preservation groups and private donors.

DMB officials say they sacrificed millions in potential profits by not developing the land, and even sold it at $10 million less than its appraised price.

“Did they make a killing? You bet,” said Claire Schlotterbeck of the Brea-based Hills for Everyone. “But they were also willing to listen.”

DMB kept a low profile in that deal, leaving its local partner to handle negotiations with local government--just as it is doing with the Rancho Mission Viejo proposal submitted Friday.