Construction should start sometime in August on 1,180 homes between Jamboree and the 241 Toll Road in East Orange, officials at the Irvine Company say. Some clearing work is taking place now.
The Santiago Hills II housing development, originally approved in 2005, will be under way once Orange officials approve a new tract map reducing the scope of the project from 1,500 to 1,180 homes on 424 acres.
An apartment community has been removed from the plans and more open space is proposed, Irvine Co. spokesman Bill Lobdell said of the most recent changes.
Lobell said the request likely won’t go before the Orange City Council until May or June, making the start date for construction sometime in August.
When the Irvine Co. proposed the Santiago Hills II project in 2005, it called for 5,500 homes on 2,500 acres of land in East Orange and Anaheim Hills. But in 2014, the Irvine Co. gifted much of that land back to the county to be permanently preserved as open space, leaving 424 acres left for development.
The proposed project is now 32 percent of the size proposed in 2005, Lobell said.
This month, crews will be laying some ground work to get the project started.
The Irvine Company will have crews on site to “clear vegetation and either remove or relocate existing trees,” Orange spokesman Paul Sitkoff said last week.
The work is expected to take place through Feb. 15.
The first model homes, Lobdell said, should be ready in fall 2017.
