Anaheim Rejects 498-Unit Apartment Project Over Wildfire Risk

The Anaheim City Council has rejected a 498-unit luxury apartment project in the Anaheim Hills over concerns about the difficulty of evacuating residents from the fire-prone area.

In a 5-2 vote, the legislative branch overturned a September approval from the city’s Planning Commission for Utah-based SALT Development proposal to build a seven-story luxury apartment building, six large-lot estate homes and 40K SF of commercial space on a 76-acre tract next to the Deer Canyon Park Preserve.

SALT’s plans for the $500M development, called Hills Preserve, included an offer to donate 46 acres of the site to the adjacent 103-acre wilderness park, which was acquired by the city in 1994 and now is used for hiking and horseback riding.

SALT had also pledged to make a $1M contribution to Anaheim’s new trust fund to finance affordable housing.

Despite the approval from the Planning Commission, a city staff report recommended the denial of the Hills Preserve project over concerns that adding so many homes to the area would increase the amount of time it takes to evacuate residents during wildfires.

Stephen Faessel, a council member who said he was inclined to support the project when it first was proposed in 2022, cited the warning in the staff report as his reason for voting against Hills Preserve, the Orange County Register reported.

“Our staff has never come before us with a project of this type and recommended against it,” Faessel said. “Yet they did this time, which means a great deal to me.”

Natalie Meeks, a council member who represents the Anaheim Hills area, said she opposed putting buildings in an area designated by the state as a very high fire hazard severity zone.

Brian Hobbs, SALT Development president, said the evacuation concerns were exaggerated by people who didn’t want to see development near them, the Register reported.

“The opposition to this project is hammering away on fire safety and evacuation and inventing new facts and introducing new opinions because they know it’s emotional, scary and hopefully can scare the elected officials into rejecting a project,” Hobbs said.

An environmental impact report for the Hills Preserve project said a wildfire evacuation in the area during a worst-case scenario would take 210 minutes—nearly four hours—if the apartment building was built, compared to 186 minutes if it wasn’t.

SALT’s project proposal called for adding fire hydrants at the site, which is located south of the 91 Freeway and Santa Ana Canyon Road, as well as reducing vegetation and building retaining walls to help mitigate the fire risk.

SALT previously notified the city it has a Plan B for the project site if Hills Preserve is rejected: resubmit a revised plan as a builder’s remedy project with 1,280 homes, of which 20% would be designated affordable.

A 2023 report from the U.S. Forest Service estimated that the share of housing in the wildland-urban interface in California-areas that have a high wildfire risk has increased by 40% since 1990.

California’s wildfires are weighing negatively on home prices more than in the past, and insurance availability does little to help in areas considered to be at higher risk, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study released in August.

“Our results suggest that property values have been more adversely impacted in recent years by being close to past wildfires than was the case previously,” the report said.

A report issued in 2022 by First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group, projected that the number of properties in California that have a 1% or greater annual chance of being affected by wildfire will grow sixfold over the next 30 years, from 100,000 to 600,000.