Rancho Project Gains Ground

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — The developers of an 8,100-home planned community on south Orange County ranchland said Wednesday they expect to finalize their deals with builders of the homes in January and construction should begin by summer.

The Ladera project on the 30,000-acre family-owned Rancho Mission Viejo is coming to fruition at what appears an opportune time. Demand for homes is high, prices are rising, jobs are multiplying in the region and construction financing is available.

“We wish we were ready to start selling today,” said Anthony R. Moiso, managing partner of the venture and scion of the O’Neill family that has owned the property for 115 years.

Drew Brown, president of the Phoenix development and investment firm providing financial backing for the project, said the cost of grading, and installing roads, sewers and the rest of the infrastructure for what had been pasture and barley fields could top $100 million.

“And we won’t blink at that,” said Brown. He operates DMB Consolidated Holdings, whose partners include Campbell Soup heir Bennett Dorrance.

Homes are expected to start going on sale in spring 1999. The five phases of the development between Rancho Santa Margarita and San Juan Capistrano should be completed in 10 to 15 years.

“The market is great now, but it won’t always be,” Moiso said in an interview at the San Juan Capistrano headquarters of Rancho Mission Viejo LLC, the family’s development and ranching company.

Moiso speaks from experience. Having given birth to the 11,500-acre community of Mission Viejo in the 1960s, his family created 5,000-acre Rancho Santa Margarita, which opened in 1986 but became snarled in the long recession of the early 1990s.

By 1995, his Rancho Santa Margarita Co. was restructuring to avoid bankruptcy. Control of the project wound up with Moiso’s then-investment partner, Copley Real Estate Advisors. He turned to his next major project, the 4,000-acre Ladera development.

If another economic downturn hits, Moiso says, his financial backers will understand this time because they too are developers and builders.

Ladera will be patterned after DC Ranch, a DMB development in Scottsdale, Ariz., where 50-home clusters on curved streets and cul-de-sacs are designed to provide a “small neighborhood” feel.

Little “pocket parks” take the place of the vacant lots Brown recalls playing in during his childhood in the East. The Ladera homes also will be wired for online services.

“We got lucky [in finding DMB as a partner],” Moiso said, “because they’re a few steps ahead of us in designing these communities.”

Moiso and Brown said builders have been eager to sign on with their project. At this point, they’re releasing the name of just one--UDC Homes, which is 50% owned by DMB.

“I’m sure they’ll have the pick of the crop,” said Michael L. Meyer, the longtime head of E&Y;/Kenneth Leventhal’s real estate consulting business in Orange County.