Rancho Mission Viejo LLC is formulating a sweeping land set-aside and development program aimed at “preserving at least 60%” of the remaining 25,000-acre Rancho Mission Viejo, according to company Chief Executive Anthony R. Moiso.
The plan, still in the conceptual stage, would “hopefully” set aside more than 15,000 acres of Orange County’s prime real estate as open space, with some limited uses for “the ranch’s historic activities,cattle ranching, citrus growing and farming.”
Moiso said he wanted environmental groups to be involved with the company as it seeks to map out its vision. No timeline or scope for the set-aside or future development has been worked out yet, a reflection of the still-formative state of the company’s planning process, Moiso said.
Moiso unveiled his vision last week in a two-hour Business Journal interview, and in a letter to Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson seeking a meeting to discuss the “planning effort.” The letter, which alluded to the advancing ages of key members of the landowning O’Neill-Moiso family, contained a sense of urgency.
“Right now the land is held by relatively few individuals who have a strong sense of heritage and stewardship,” Moiso wrote. “This opportunity may pass into history soon. I repeat my belief that this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. While the process will not be easy, it must be seized now.”
Moiso told the Business Journal: “We’ve built a lot of wonderful communities but the opportunity here and the legacy we’d like to leave is all those open space areas. You know if it were only me it might be even more because I’ve gotten to the point in my life where we’ve already done the development, but there are other people here and where I had the opportunity, now they have to have the opportunity.”
During the interview, three generations of owners of the historic Rancho Mission Viejo were represented: 61-year-old Moiso who oversees the daily management of the operation; his daughters, 36-year-old Katrina Moiso and 30-year-old Anne Marie Moiso; who work in the company and are expected to be leaders of the company in the future; and Moiso’s 77-year-old uncle and the company’s Chairman Richard J. O’Neill Jr., who sat in on the last portion of the interview.
Throughout the interview, Moiso frequently stood up and used maps and a large satellite photo of the historic ranch, pointing out areas where he sees future potential development and other areas that would be preserved, either outright as open space or in some sort of limited-use plan.
The move to formulate a plan is being fueled partly by the advancing ages of O’Neill and Moiso’s mother, 84-year-old Alice O’Neill Avery. (Anthony Moiso is a child of Alice O’Neill’s first marriage, to James Moiso.)
“So why do I want to do this now? It would be the final crowning achievement while these people are alive, the people that let me run out and do all this stuff for 35 years,” Moiso said. “I would be able to look them in the eye and say we’ve preserved ranching and farming, we’ve established an unbelievable gift to the county of Orange and the people, and it somehow pays for itself. That’s why I’m trying to (do it) right now and that’s why I’m getting out in front as opposed to waiting for things to happen or being precluded from ever happening.”
Environmental Factors
But the decision to formulate the plan now also may reflect the rising activism on the part of environmental groups and the increasing involvement of oversight agencies such as the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Army Corps of Engineers. (Recently, the Department of Fish and Wildlife designated 513,000 acres as “critical habitat” for the California gnatcatcher, including 73,500 acres in Orange County and most of the Rancho Mission Viejo. The move makes it more difficult to develop that land and is being opposed stridently by Rancho Mission Viejo LLC and other developers.)
Moiso said he hoped “there will be a spirit of cooperation with the environmental community” as the company formulates its plan.
Yet even as he maps out a vision for the rest of the Rancho Mission Viejo, Moiso acknowledges and expects future challenges from some environmentalists.
“I’ve met with the environmental community and if they had their way, the only thing we’d develop is what you can see outside this window,” said Moiso, pointing to the picturesque hills beyond the company’s San Juan Capistrano headquarters. “And that doesn’t address the county’s challenges.”
Foremost among those challenges, Moiso said, is providing housing and job opportunities for a fast-growing population, which today stands at 2.8 million, up 17% from 1990. Studies predict that growth will continue at a rapid pace, with the county’s population surpassing 3 million people by 2005 and 3.4 million by 2025.
But Moiso said that other landowners, government officials, developers and businesspeople must share the burden of accommodating and planning for that growth equally.
Referring to a satellite photo of the tightly spaced homes in Mission Viejo and central Orange County, Moiso declared that “never again” would he be party to such packed development.
Moiso said within any future land to be developed there would also be open space and parks, as well as schools, places of worship and similar “infrastructure.”
(It was the O’Neill family that in 1964 established the Mission Viejo Co. for the development of the 10,000-acre Mission Viejo community, though ownership and responsibility for the execution of that plan changed hands in 1967. Nonetheless, Moiso,along with fellow OC real estate developer and The Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren,were closely involved in the initial planning of the area.)
Over the years, the O’Neill-Moiso family has made numerous open space declarations, but nothing on the scale of the plan now envisioned by Moiso. The single biggest pervious dedication by the family was 2,200 acres donated in 1982 for the expansion of Caspers Regional Park.
“I doubt that any process of the magnitude I envision has ever been initiated, yet alone accomplished,” Moiso wrote to Wilson.
“We do have some reservations proposing this innovative planning effort, as we are not so naive as to assume that a proactive approach to land preservation and management is not without risk of criticism from the opponents of change,” Moiso went on to write in the letter. “We have heard from those who harbor the view that constraining our use of the property, in conjunction with the huge maintenance costs and taxes we face, will drive the family financially under, forcing a tax sale on the courthouse steps and the confiscation of our land. Others don’t even think that far ahead, believing that the County of Orange or some other branch of government can and will purchase our property under duress.
“Neither of the above scenarios is realistic. I can assure that, long before our land suffers any financial duress by way of any governmental action or inaction, creditors, bankers, and their lawyers, combined with other financial realities, would force the dismantling of our land-holding piece-by-piece to the highest bidders, thereby ruining our heritage and any possibility of the truly comprehensive preservation and land management program envisioned.”
Crowning Act
Moiso clearly was in a reflective mood during the interview, commenting that, “Our eyes are to the future of the rest of the ranch” and that he hoped “the plan would be the crowning act of our legacy.”
The key vehicle for the formulation of this plan would be the Natural Community Conservancy Planning process, which seeks to balance economic activity with preservation efforts. But in question is the effect of the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s recent “critical habitat” designation and what it means for the future of the NCCP.
Moiso repeatedly stressed that the company is not approaching this process or formulating the plan with a specific number of units or acreage it wants to develop.
“We’re not working on a plan, like in the past, where we’re going in there and saying ‘We want to develop 10,000 of these acres and if you let me do it, I’m going to put all of the rest of this aside,'” Moiso said. “We’re coming at it the other way. What we want to do is preserve a lot of the land and establish that parkland that we talked about and in that flows some development.”
Moiso said that he would “go back to the environmental community once we have all those studies in place, invite them in, get all the people who are interested in trails and hiking and recreation and invite them in to identify all the constituencies who would qualify as a stakeholder and get them involved.”
Asked whether he would invite these groups in during the planning stages, Moiso said “they’d be welcome, because without everybody’s involvement, we’re never going to get there.”
However, to actually implement such a scenario, the eventual plan must take into account enough development to make it all feasible, he said.
“We have not even taken a look at the economics of what I’m talking about,” he said.
The company is undertaking various studies,”It’s tens of millions of dollars that we’re investing in this analysis”,that may not be completed until 2003, in order to take what Moiso acknowledged is at this point a vision and fashion it into a concrete plan of action.
“Before we launch anything and before we sign anything, the goal is to have everyone come across the finish line at the same time,” said Moiso, in reference to agreement among his family’s company, governmental agencies, environmental groups and other “stakeholders.”
It has to be “a plan (in which) everybody wins, but it has to make economic sense,” he added.
Moiso was unclear himself as to what constitutes “economic sense,” partly because it still is unclear what kind of infrastructure will need to be in place in the future to support any planned development.
“We’re looking for ways to preserve a great portion of this ranch,” Moiso said. “We want to ranch and farm, we also want to continue development on portions of this ranch.”
Once such a plan for this vision is set, Moiso said he sees himself stepping back from the day-to-day management of the operation.
“I will always show up around here, but the implementation of that dream, they’d be responsible for it,” said Moiso, pointing to Katrina and Anne Marie seated next to him. “There will be others who will have to show up on a daily basis; professionals who will make it happen.” n
