Deer Canyon Development: the Many Hazards. SURPRISE UPDATE – Council DENIES!


Since when does a developer get to tell the Fire and Police Departments they’re overreacting about public safety—and then push forward a project anyway? Yet that’s exactly what happened at the Planning Commission Hearing for the ‘Hills Preserve’ Development next to Deer Canyon Park in Anaheim Hills.

This project is one of the most controversial topics in Anaheim Hills, sparking intense opposition from thousands of residents against a 500-apartment development planned for Santa Ana Canyon Road. Cal Fire has defined the area as a High-Fire-Severity Zone, meaning that laws and regulations are meant to limit development there, especially due to evacuation risks.

The proposed location has only one way out: Santa Ana Canyon Road, which also serves as the primary evacuation route for the east side of Anaheim. In past fires, this route has been clogged with gridlocked traffic, with some homes even catching fire. The community’s concern is that this development will only worsen the bottleneck, trapping people in gridlock and putting those in higher-risk areas at greater peril as new vehicles flood an already overwhelmed road system.

Residents argue the “Know Your Way” evacuation plan is fundamentally flawed. For instance, the city suggests blocking all incoming traffic to make it one-way-out, yet they offer no viable strategy for evacuating children, the elderly, or non-drivers. Their proposed solution is that residents assign a neighbor who doesn’t work to help evacuate their block.

The traffic and evacuation assessment here is even more misleading than what Disneyland Forward presented earlier this year. The traffic study in the Hills was conducted on June 7, 2022, just before Canyon High School’s graduation. Private schools, preschools, and community colleges were already out for the summer. Although the study claims to be “during the school year,” it clearly was not. This garbage in has led to garbage out.

The worst part is that the emergency evacuation study shows a significant increase in evacuation time. To minimize this impact down to zero, the developer proposed that residents simply won’t evacuate. Their claim? Residents will “stay put” to let others leave first. If a fire were raging in the canyon, sure, people would evacuate—but in the other scenarios the study covers, residents are assumed to stay in their rooms, thus not impacting traffic. Shockingly, the Planning Commission accepted this and voted it as a “finding of fact”—a solution deemed worthy of approval.

This is a dangerous precedent. We have a developer presenting a hypothetical, untested safety plan that relies on local police to enforce. According to the Findings of Fact document posted to the City Council Agenda, Anaheim PD would block people from leaving. In my view, this sounds like an unofficial version of martial law. How do you tell over 1,000 people they can’t go to the beach, grocery store, or leave a smoke-filled canyon so others in District 6 can evacuate first? In real emergencies, people don’t always follow directions. When current residents voice concerns about this plan, they’re accused of being over-dramatic or anti-housing. Perhaps this gaslighting marks the start of a new era where developers call all the shots in Anaheim.

If a developer can propose theoretical safety measures and expect the city’s police and fire departments to enforce them, where does this end? Could other developers argue that residents won’t leave their homes either, thus having no impact on the community? For example, SALT Development claimed a 4.5% traffic mitigation credit, stating that future residents would be permitted to work from home. SALT is building an apartment complex, yet no other such project has been allowed this credit. An unrelated Riverside County developer was denied this same credit, with a traffic report clarifying why it didn’t apply. In Anaheim, though, it does. The only other development allowed this reduction is Disney, but Disney does control their employees’ schedules—SALT does not control tenants’ work or their choice to flee a dangerous situation.

At what point does Anaheim stop letting the tail wag the dog? This could be the beginning. While council members and the city have some liability protection, they’re not exempt from negligence—particularly when city staff, Anaheim PD, and Anaheim FD publicly advise against the project. Planning Commission Chair Lucille Kring voted to ignore this guidance, saying she’d PRAY DAILY for residents’ safety. Not exactly fact-finding. Taxpayers from all six districts will ultimately bear the cost for settlements if poor decisions lead to damages. Maui County and others had to pay $4 billion in lawsuits for similar liabilities. How many fire stations would Anaheim need to mortgage to cover that? Time will tell…

Kring will “pray daily!

[Editor’s Note: The Council will vote on this tomorrow, Tuesday October 29, (a week before Election Day, which only really affects one of them.) Will they overrule the Planning Commission’s shocking approval of this project earlier this month, which defied the warnings of staff, fire, police, and even Ted White? As Hannah has not mentioned, this project’s lobbyist is Tom Daly, former Anaheim Mayor and Assemblyman – how omnipotent is he still?]

About Hannah Heim

Hannah Heim is an Anaheim Hills resident who has been following Anaheim's planning and development processes with dismay for about a year now. Hannah prefers to remain anonymous because "they" don't want their political writing showing up when someone googles their name, and possibly impacting their very successful professional career.