Protect our Homes and Hills is a grassroots citizen group made up of Yorba Linda residents concerned about two proposed hillside developments. The focus is now only on the Esperanza Hills project as residents reached a settlement agreement with the developer of the Cielo Vista project.
Synopsis
Two adjacent housing projects have been proposed in the steep hillside terrain above Yorba Linda. Neither of the projects is within Yorba Linda city limits and therefore the projects will be processed and reviewed by the County of Orange.
Cielo Vista is constrained to 80 units based on a settlement agreement reached by residents with Protect Our Homes and Hills. The project will be built on the southern portion of the site’s 87 acres. A daily access is planned for Via del Agua.
Esperanza Hills is a 340 unit project on 469 acres due east of the Cielo Vista project. It also proposes to only use Stonehaven as the ingress/egress to the project. An emergency access has been agreed to wind its way through the neighboring Cielo Vista project streets.
Both project sites burned to the ground in the Freeway Complex Fire of 2008. If approved, the two projects would add approximately 4500 vehicle trips a day to already overburdened Yorba Linda streets. As a rule of thumb, each housing unit is estimated to generate 10 vehicle trips a day. This includes not just the residents but all of the other vehicle that provide service (FedEx, pool guy, etc.). Therefore 420 houses x 10 vehicle trips a day = 4,200 additional car trips a day on area streets.
Status
For details on each project go to their respective pages. In short, the Leadership Team reached to a settlement agreement with the Cielo Vista developer and while the last legal battle was lost on Esperanza Hills, the City of Yorba Linda refuses to allow access across its open space lots–functionally stopping the project. Learn more: