City, Orange County
© McCormack's Guides
Zip Codes: 92656, 92698
Bedroom
city, master planned. Many new or fairly new homes. Newest city in Orange
County, having incorporated in 2001. Scores high, crime low. www.mccormacks.com
Three to six miles in from the
Pacific. Almost surrounded by mountains and ravines that have been placed into
large parks. The housing rolls over hills, mesas and ravines.
Aliso Viejo covers about 7,000
acres and upon buildout will have about 20,000 homes, apartments and condos. As
of 2006, the housing count was about 18,000.
Click for regional or detailed map
The population runs two-thirds
owners, one-third renters. Population 45,249. Median age 33. About 28 percent
of the city is under age 21. These demographics say rounded town with many kids
heading for college.
In 2007, Foxborough Elementary, for want of students, was
closing. Its students are to be transferred to Wood Canyon Elementary.
Aliso Viejo looks typical suburban but it has its unusual
aspects, among them, a university with striking buildings.
In 2001, Soka University, private, opened its doors and in 2005 graduated its first class.
Buddhist in orientation but with an activist tradition, Soka comes across as an
Italian mountain town plopped down on the edge of suburbia. www.mccormacks.com
The university's recreation
center, large and rounded, speaks of Asia. The student building, domed and
columned, recalls ancient Greece. This is not some storefront
“university.” It's big: 18
buildings in the first phase; enrollment to grow to 1,200.
Lake, fountain, residence halls, library, academic buildings,
gym and pool. To be built later: 2,000-seat performing arts center.
Students study how people in global society treat the
environment. Other subjects: health, ecology, war and peace, nonviolence, and
the traditional subjects, including biology, math, sciences, computers and languages
(Japanese, Chinese and Spanish, the initial offerings).
Just across the street from
the campus, the look turns suburban with a few twists. Aliso Viejo is a
master-planned community designed by the developer, consulting with planners at
the county government. Although work began about 20 years ago, Aliso Viejo did
not hit its stride until the 1990s. The community started that decade with
7,612 residents and finished with more than 40,000.
Master-planned communities
(see profiles on Irvine and Mission Viejo) lay out the big picture from the
start — schools, parks, shopping centers, office and business parks
— and pay close attention to moving traffic to the freeways. Aliso Viejo
is split by Highway 73 (tolls) and is close to Interstate 5, a freeway. Four-
and six-lane arterials crisscross the city. www.mccormacks.com
But master-planned communities
are not static, designed down to last nail. In the 1980s and 1990s, architects,
tired of the cookie-cutter look, injected some friendly touches —
porches, stoops, home clusters in ways that resemble the row houses of London
and Philadelphia. Some tracts favor the new look, others the traditional.
Aliso
Viejo, along with several other cities in the county, is dabbling in mixing
housing with retail, an old urban concept but long ignored in suburbia.
Each tract comes with a small
park or rec facility and with membership in the homeowners' association. These
help build a sense of neighborhood. The town comes together in the larger sense
at the schools, the stores, the parks and the workplace.
The state tally in 2008 showed 18,047 residential units:
6,463 single homes, 4,947 single attached, 6,622 apartments, 15 mobile homes.
Some neighborhoods are gated.
Also unusual, Aliso Viejo has two big governments and dozens
of mini governments. For a number of reasons, many having to do with tax laws,
Aliso Viejo was formed under the governing aegis of a homeowners’ association
that includes all or almost all of the city.
The Aliso Viejo Community Association owns and manages 22
parks and the common grounds and sponsors many recreation programs. And it
enforces many rules, including sign ordinances and nuisance complaints, and
collects quarterly fees. www.mccormacks.com
Aliso Viejo was built in separate tracts or neighborhoods and
each its own homeowners association — the mini governments. These
associations, which also level fees, take care of their immediate grounds and
possibly a neighborhood center or a neighborhood pool. Amenities vary by
neighborhood.
Finally, the city government, which came to life to fight one
issue and that issue has been decided but the city government goes on.
About 2000, when movers and shakers in the county were trying
to convert the Marine Air Base at Irvine into a large civilian airport, many
residents found themselves almost powerless to kill the idea, which they
strongly opposed. A civilian base would have routed planes over their
communities. Lacking a government structure, they were shut out of many
meetings where decisions were being made and denied tactics that would have
made them more effective.
One by one, these homeowner communities incorporated
themselves as legal cities. Within a few years, the airport proposal was toast;
the land is being developed (see Irvine).
But the cities live on and the
benefits of being a city have been discovered. Cities get revenue subventions
from the state and have more control over planning than unincorporated
communities.
Which is why Aliso Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Laguna
Woods and Laguna Niguel have these overlays of homeowner associations and city
governments.
Yes, complicated but with a little slogging understandable. Ask
questions. Find out which agency or association provides what, especially in
recreation. The city owns and runs one park, Iglesia — tot lot, softball
fields, tennis and handball courts. www.mccormacks.com
(Incidentally, the homeowner associations get into arguments
over fees, a form of taxes, and expenses and protecting views and choosing
delegates and other issues that typically wind on the agendas of many city
councils. A government by any name is still a government.)
Typical sports — baseball, basketball, soccer —
and many activities, some of them sponsored by private parties, foremost the
YMCA. Library. Golf course, designed by Jack
Nicklaus, on the north side. Movie
complex and summer concerts at the Town Center Plaza. Indoor ice-skating rink;
hockey leagues. Teen center. Egg hunt, Fourth of July activities. Trails wind
through hills, great for hiking. Short drive to ocean beaches, Barnes and Noble
bookstore. Restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, neighborhood shopping
plazas. Regional malls nearby.
Within the city, about 800
acres have been dedicated for community parks, schools, recreation and
community facilities.
Aliso Viejo has set aside land
for large office parks and has wooed and won big firms. In 2005, upsetting
many, the Fluor Corporation, then the largest employer in Aliso Viejo,
announced it was moving its headquarter's staff and many operations to Texas
but hundreds of Fluor jobs remain in Aliso Viejo.
The city in 2007 was working
on a project that if successful will bring in an insurance company and 1,000
employees. www.mccormacks.com
All the schools in Aliso Viejo
are run by the Capistrano school
district but a few streets are in the Laguna Beach and Saddleback districts.
Call the Capistrano district to find out which schools your children will
attend. These districts are among the highest scoring in Orange County. Several
Aliso Viejo schools have won state and national awards for academic
excellence. See Schools.
In recent years, the district
got dragged into or blundered into a donnybrook over changing attendance
boundaries because a new high school opened in San Juan Capistrano. New superintendent may bring peace.
Capistrano district, like many
districts in the state, is seeing its enrollments rise in some neighborhoods
and decline in others. In its formative years, Aliso Viejo attracted many young
families with children who are now teens or young adults and heading out the
door. The empty-nester parents are staying. Hence, the closing of Foxborough Elementary.
Most teens attend Laguna
Niguel High School, scores generally in the 90th percentile.
For driving, Interstate 5 and
Highway 73, a toll road. Metrolink (commute rail) station at Interstate 5.
Wide and fast-moving arterials through town. Scenic but to be avoided at peak
hours and on weekends, Highway 1, which travels the coast and attracts many
tourists. www.mccormacks.com
• Aliso Viejo Golf Course is
being reduced from 27 holes to 18 and losing its driving range. Not enough
golfers. The greens and range will be replaced by about 500 homes and an
aquatics center with memberships open to the public. Also coming, a hotel with
a sports club (BB court, aerobics, racquet ball) and public memberships.
• City hall is clustering
three office buildings, one nine stories, and hotel near the toll high way and
the Town Center, a shopping area.
• Aliso Viejo contracts with
the sheriff's office for police protection. Two homicides in 2005, zero in 2004, 2003 and 2002. In 2005,
a young man shot and killed his neighbors, a father and a daughter, and then
killed himself. See Crime.
• Charter school to take over a portion of Foxborough
Elementary when it closes.
• Clean city, imaginative and
colorful landscaping. Much of the credit goes to the homeowner associations. www.mccormacks.com
• Close to the ocean, Aliso
Viejo catches many ocean breezes that take the edge off the summer heat.
• Annual peace gala at Soka
University.
• Couldn’t say no. Aliso Viejo
couple in 2006 got into trouble with their neighbors because of stench coming
from their home. Husband and wife loved cats and couldn’t turn away strays. At
first, they had them spayed but short of money had to stop this and one day
woke up with 82 cats. Which, authorities reported, they took good care of and
kept the yard and house neat but 82 cats have an odor dynamic of their own.
City code says no more than three cats or dogs per household and after
complaints brought in animal control that’s all the couple were allowed to
keep. Rest euthanized if unhealthy or put up for adoption.
• Because Aliso Viejo contracts
out services, police protection the most important, and because the homeowner
associations do so much, the town gets by with a municipal staff of fewer than
20 people.
Aliso Viejo Community
Association (949) 362-5890. www.mccormacks.com
Chamber of commerce for region
(949) 635-5800. City hall (949) 425-2500.
City web
site:
www.cityofalisoviejo.com
