By Eric Engelbert
A 20-Year Fight Over the Orange Hills
Few development projects in Orange County have a longer or more complicated history than Orange Heights. The Irvine Company has been trying to build homes in the eastern foothills of the City of Orange since 2005. The project has been scaled back from 4,000 homes to 1,058. More than 6,600 acres of surrounding land has been donated as permanent open space. A new environmental review is now underway. And more than 27,000 people have signed a petition to stop it. This post covers where the project stands, what the arguments are on both sides, and what any of this means if you are a buyer or homeowner in East Orange. Browse current homes for sale in Orange.
Twenty Years of Approvals, Revisions, and Pushback
The Orange Heights story begins in 2005, when the City of Orange approved an environmental review for a project then called Santiago Hills Phase II, which would have placed over 4,000 homes in the eastern foothills stretching from the edge of Orange toward Irvine Lake. That plan drew immediate opposition and legal challenges from environmental groups and nearby residents.
By 2014, the Irvine Company had made a major move. They donated roughly 6,600 acres of the surrounding foothill land to OC Parks as permanent open space, creating two new public wilderness areas: the Red Rock Wilderness and the Saddleback Wilderness. Those areas are now open to hikers and have become part of the broader Irvine Ranch Land Reserve, one of the largest nature reserves close to a major American city.
In 2016, the City of Orange approved a significantly reduced version of the project: 1,180 for-sale homes on 421 acres, with the surrounding open space protected and permanent trail connections to Irvine Regional Park and Peters Canyon Regional Park. That approval has since been refined further, dropping the unit count to 1,058 homes. The current version, known as the Refined Orange Heights Project, filed its most recent modifications in April 2026 and is now working through a new environmental review process.
The Land Donation Deal: What the Irvine Company Gave and What They Kept
The structure of this project is worth understanding clearly, because it is at the heart of both the community's support for it and the opposition's criticism of it.
The Irvine Company donated roughly 6,600 acres of land, or about 90 percent of their holdings in this area, as permanent conservation open space. That donation went to OC Parks and is now permanently protected. It expanded what is known as the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve into a connected open space system stretching from the Cleveland National Forest to the Pacific Ocean. By any measure, that is a significant gift to the public.
What they kept is the other 10 percent: approximately 421 acres of flatter, more buildable land at the edges of the site. On that land, they are proposing 1,058 single-family homes. They also kept development rights on land that had already been entitled for years.
The criticism from the opposition centers on two things. First, much of the donated land was in areas that were never realistically developable: steep hillsides, active wildlife corridors, and terrain in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. Critics argue the Irvine Company gave away land they could not build on anyway, took a large federal tax deduction on the charitable donation, and held onto the buildable land for the project. Second, the opposition contends that the city gets little in return financially, since a remote hillside neighborhood generates high service costs for fire protection, road maintenance, and emergency response while the property tax revenue takes years to catch up.
The Irvine Company's position is that the donation was genuinely significant, that they pledged $27 million toward schools, parks, libraries, fire protection, and transportation improvements, and that the project will widen and improve Santiago Canyon Road with new bike lanes and landscaped medians. They also note that the open space donation was done in genuine partnership with environmental groups and was the result of years of negotiation, not an attempt to game the system.
Both of these things can be true at the same time. The donation created real, lasting public benefit. And the structure also gave Irvine Company a tax advantage and development rights they had been seeking for years.
Why 27,000 People Have Signed a Petition to Stop It
The opposition to Orange Heights is organized, funded, and growing. The group Save Orange Hills has gathered over 27,000 signatures on its Change.org petition and has proposed an alternative: instead of 1,058 homes, the remaining 421 acres should become the Orange Hills Regional Park, connecting Irvine Regional Park and Peters Canyon Regional Park into a single 1,245-acre public open space. Their argument is that this alternative would be worth more to the public than the homes.
Several specific concerns are driving the opposition.
Fire hazard. The California State Fire Marshal designated the center of the proposed Orange Heights project as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone in 2025. The 2017 Canyon Fire 2 burned 9,217 acres in this same area. A retired Orange County Fire Authority chief has publicly stated that building homes here is a "predictably costly mistake." Critics point out that sending fire crews into a remote hillside neighborhood during a canyon fire is a serious public safety risk for both residents and first responders.
Wildlife. The project site sits in an active mountain lion travel corridor. Researchers who study mountain lions in Orange County have documented regular use of this area by lions moving between wild spaces on either side of the SR-241 and SR-261 toll roads. The site is also home to several species that have legal protections: the Crotch's bumblebee, Bell's vireo, the coastal California gnatcatcher, and the white-tailed kite. A lawsuit was filed against the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for approving an incidental take permit without a full environmental review covering wildfire risk, traffic impacts, and endangered species.
A Native American village site. A prehistoric site known as CA-ORA-556, containing at least 635 stone artifacts, sits within the project boundary and qualifies for the California Register of Historical Resources. The Tongva Gabrieleno, Kizh Nation, and Acjachemen Juaneno tribes all consider this area a culturally significant landscape. The San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians submitted a formal letter opposing the project.
Traffic. Santiago Canyon Road and Jamboree Road are already congested during peak hours. The opposition argues that adding 1,058 homes in a location with limited road access will make an existing problem significantly worse, with no substantial offsetting benefit to nearby residents.
The Fiscal Argument: Does Orange Come Out Ahead?
One of the sharpest arguments from the opposition is that the City of Orange gets very little financially from approving this project. A remote hillside housing development requires expensive ongoing city services: fire protection, road maintenance, emergency response, and eventually utility infrastructure. Property tax revenue from new homes typically takes many years to offset those costs, especially when the homes are far from existing city infrastructure.
The Irvine Company disputes this and points to the $27 million in community benefit contributions built into the project, along with new road improvements on Santiago Canyon Road. From their perspective, the city gets improved public infrastructure, new parks access, and a long-term tax base from 1,058 high-value homes.
No independent fiscal impact study specifically for this refined version of the project has been released publicly as of mid-2026. The environmental review process that is now underway will include a fiscal analysis. That document, when it is published in draft form, will be the clearest picture of what the city actually gains or loses from approving this.
Where the Project Stands Right Now
As of July 2026, Orange Heights is in the early stages of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Review. The City of Orange circulated a Notice of Preparation for that review in early 2026, with the public comment period extended to May 26, 2026. A public scoping meeting at the Orange Public Library in May drew 57 attendees who asked questions and submitted comments for the record.
The draft environmental review is expected to be released sometime in late 2026 or early 2027. After that, there will be another public comment period, followed by hearings before the Orange Planning Commission and ultimately the City Council. If the project is approved at that point, it could still face legal challenges, as the existing lawsuit over the fish and wildlife permit is still working through the courts.
This means construction is, at a minimum, several years away. It is also not a sure thing. The opposition is well organized, legally funded, and drawing on the historical precedent that community groups have successfully stopped or reshaped Irvine Company developments before, including Laguna Canyon (now Laguna Canyon Wilderness Park), Upper Newport Bay (now an ecological reserve), Crystal Cove, and Banning Ranch (now the Randall Preserve).
The Rest of Orange's Housing Pipeline
Orange Heights gets most of the attention, but it is only one piece of the city's plan to meet California's requirement of 3,936 new homes by 2029. The city's housing element was certified by the state in January 2024. Here is where the rest of the housing is supposed to come from.
Uptown Orange is the most active zone in the city right now. It sits near the Outlets of Orange and UCI Medical Center, zoned for up to 60 units per acre as a regional mixed-use node. AMLI Uptown Orange at 385 S. Manchester Avenue has already delivered 334 luxury apartments and is fully occupied. UCI Medical Center's ongoing expansion is driving continued demand for housing close by, and the city is actively pitching the area to additional developers.
Katella Avenue Corridor runs along West Katella from the Santa Ana River to Batavia Street, next to Angel Stadium, Honda Center, ARTIC, and the OC Vibe development in Anaheim just across the river. The city calls out the Stadium Promenade site specifically as a prime candidate for high-density housing and mixed-use redevelopment, with zoning that allows up to 60 units per acre. The corridor benefits from the same developer interest that OC Vibe is drawing on the Anaheim side of the river, and the city has laid out a vision for it as Orange's western urban gateway.
South Main Street Corridor is anchored by CHOC Children's Hospital and St. Joseph Hospital. The city sees this area as a natural location for higher-density housing for medical professionals and staff who want to live close to work. Mixed-use and high-density residential are the target uses along Town and Country Road and the surrounding blocks.
2375 N. Tustin Street, a 4.32-acre commercial retail site known as Village Town Center, has an active environmental review underway for a potential conversion to residential use. It represents the type of underused commercial property the city needs to repurpose if it is going to hit its 2029 numbers without relying entirely on large single projects.
The big-picture point: most of Orange's housing pipeline is concentrated in the western and central parts of the city, close to existing infrastructure and jobs. Orange Heights, if built, would be by far the largest single project, but it is also the furthest from existing city services and the most contested. If Orange Heights stalls or is blocked, those three corridors plus commercial conversions would need to carry most of the weight.
What This Means If You Are Buying or Selling in East Orange
If you are interested in eventually buying at Orange Heights: There is nothing to buy yet and there may not be for several years. The project has not been finally approved, the environmental review is still in process, and the legal challenges have not been resolved. When and if the project does reach sales, these would be new Irvine Company single-family homes near Irvine Regional Park in the eastern Orange foothills. That location, combined with the open space connection and the park access, would likely put pricing well above the median for the City of Orange. The closest comparable is what Irvine Company charges for new homes near similar open space in Irvine and Tustin Ranch, which has historically run from the high $1 millions to over $3 million for larger foothill homes. Sign up for updates at orangeheightsmasterplan.com if you want to be notified when sales information becomes available.
If you own a home in the neighborhoods near Santiago Canyon Road: The most immediate effect of this project, if approved, would be added traffic during construction and potentially afterward on Santiago Canyon Road and Jamboree. The road improvements that are part of the project plan could help offset that over time. As for property values, proximity to Irvine Regional Park and a well-built Irvine Company community has historically been a positive for nearby neighborhoods once construction wraps up, even if the construction period itself is disruptive.
If you own a home backing the open space or in the eastern Orange hills: The outcome of this project affects your view corridor, your fire risk, and the feel of your neighborhood more directly than anyone else. Staying current on the environmental review and attending any public hearings will give you the best chance to make your concerns part of the official record. You can ask to be added to the City of Orange's public notice list for the project by emailing the planning department at hbeckman@cityoforange.org. Browse Orange homes for sale to see current inventory.
Following This One Closely
Orange Heights is one of the most contested development proposals in Orange County right now. Whether it gets built, blocked, or negotiated into something different, the outcome will shape a significant piece of the eastern Orange hills for decades. I will update this post as the environmental review moves forward and as any court decisions come down. If you want to talk through what any of this means for a home you own or are looking to buy near this area, reach out anytime.
