Corona Finds a Roadblock in Its Pathway to Progress

CORONA — A two-lane road separates this city’s past from its future.

South of Ontario Avenue lie citrus groves and avocado orchards, the legacy of the century-old city’s agricultural roots.

North of Ontario spread rows of houses, the fruit of Corona’s modern growth industry.

That the tracts will overtake the trees is a virtual certainty. Demand for new housing in the area is strong, and the farm industry--facing high water prices, tough competition and a lack of packing facilities--is relatively weak.

So city planners, consultants and landowners have been working since 1982 to develop a master plan to guide the city’s growth across Ontario Avenue, to open nearly a third of the city’s area to urban development.

Opposition Encountered

Their proposals for the 4,900-acre greenbelt have run into a wall of opposition, however, from residents who say the plans ignore existing patterns of development and threaten the businesses of Corona’s already ailing downtown shopping district.

The plans call for four oblong “villages” with social, recreational and educational facilities at their centers. Those village cores would be surrounded by apartments and condominiums, then by an outer ring of single-family homes.

“A village concept is good only when you have nobody living there and one owner, like (in) Mission Viejo or Irvine,” said Tarik Shamma, a south Corona resident, professional planner and developer, and leader of opposition to the proposed master plan.

In plotting the south Corona villages, planners failed to consider the houses already scattered about the greenbelt on lots of five or more acres, Shamma and other residents of the agricultural area claim. The planners’ maps show dense village cores where some of their homes already sit.

Corona planners have no count of the number of residents or homes already in the greenbelt, but a consultant’s survey found the area to be 6% developed, said Deanna Elliano, senior planner for the city.

‘Elitist Life Style’

Only a handful of the city’s 43,000 residents oppose the south Corona plan, asserted attorney Derrill Yeager, who accused opponents of trying to perpetuate “the elitist life style they represent.”

Yeager represents the Corona Agricultural Land Owners Assn., a coalition of 100 people who own 2,300 acres in the greenbelt.

“I am not an elitist,” countered Rex Baxter, who lives on two-thirds of an acre in the greenbelt. “I am not opposed to growth. . . . I know growth is going to come and that’s fine, but the densely populated villages are not the right approach.”

The 15,000 housing units proposed for the agricultural area are the minimum necessary to spread adequately the costs of public improvements such as streets, sewers and water systems, Yeager said.

Besides their dispute with the proposed density, opponents fear that with public facilities concentrated in the village cores and with 77 acres of new commercial development, new residents will have little reason to identify with--or shop in--the rest of the city.

“The cookie-cutter conceptual land use seems to seek the creation of a ‘separate’ city of south Corona,” Shamma wrote in a petition with about 140 signatures submitted to the city Planning Commission last week.

“There will be no reason,” the petition states, “for any residents of south Corona to patronize the shops and businesses of downtown Corona or (to) feel physically, culturally or emotionally as part of ‘Old Corona.’ ”

Shopping Issue

New residents will take their business where it is most convenient to shop, said Bob McMakin, a member of the Planning Commission. Without community shopping centers in south Corona, he said, they still might pass by downtown Corona.

“I would hate to see our developed downtown area go dead,” said Commissioner Andrea Puga.

The proposed master plan will see further review by the Planning Commission and additional public hearings before it goes to the City Council for final approval.

Besides trying to resolve the major differences between the agricultural landowners and the greenbelt residents, the commission will consider specific issues such as future street alignments, zoning requirements and plans for phasing in public improvements.

Support for the planning process came from the Corona Agricultural Land Owners Assn., which contributed $100,000 in the belief that “the continuation of agriculture in south Corona is doomed,” Yeager said.

‘Not Making Money’

“I’m not making any money, and most of my friends aren’t making any money,” said Charles Colliday, an association member who owns or manages large portions of the agricultural area.

Although they paid for creating the proposed master plan, Colliday said, members of the landowners’ group did not suggest the four-village plan and are not wedded to that vision of south Corona’s future.

The plan’s opponents have accused the city of failing to give area residents proper notice of its actions and plans and of surrendering its impartiality by participating in the planning.

“I don’t see any deficiencies in what the city has done,” said Clark Alsop, a city attorney.