ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014\u00a0For months, residents have been battling with Anaheim City Council members over a proposed housing project in Anaheim Hills.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
\u00a0The city council approved the complex in a 4-3 vote on March 3
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Andrew Winger is one of hundreds of other residents who argue the 450-apartment complex proposal known as The Festival Project will put Anaheim Hills residents in danger
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In 2017 during Canyon Fire 2, Winger said he and many other residents were stuck in traffic trying to evacuate for three hours, and he thinks adding roughly 1,000 vehicles to that evacuation will only make things worse
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Following the vote, he filed for a rehearing, and if approved, that would have restarted the voting process, but the rehearing was denied by the city council, ultimately solidifying the Festival Project<\/p>\n
On March 3, the City Council approved the complex in a vote of 4-3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andrew Winger is one of hundreds of other residents who are arguing the 450-apartment complex proposal known as The Festival Project will put Anaheim Hills residents in danger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is like being at Disneyland where they give the fast pass and the regular people have to wait in the line; it takes everyone longer to get out,\u201d said Winger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Winger noted that when it comes to evacuating the Anaheim Hills area during a wildfire, there are limited options, which can lead to road congestion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2017 during the Canyon Fire 2, Winger said he and many other residents were stuck in traffic trying to evacuate for three hours, and he thinks adding roughly 1,000 vehicles to that evacuation will only make things worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could see in the rearview mirror, flames on the hill behind us as we are stuck in traffic and if the winds would have shifted, the street is a treeline street, we all would have gone,\u201d said Winger.<\/p>\n
Mike Lyster is the chief communications officer for the City of Anaheim. He said the city made mistakes during the Canyon 2 fire by evacuating an unnecessary number of people.<\/p>\n
Since then, the city has assigned pre-mapped evacuation zones, known as the Know Your Way project, which it aims to ease evacuation congestion issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that the current evacuation planning and the resources we have in place can accommodate this particular development,\u201d said Lyster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lyster added that the housing complex will take over an abandoned Edwards Cinema that, while in operation, hosted a similar number of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anaheim Fire Chief Pat Russell reviewed and approved the Festival Project. During the March 3 City Council meeting, he said he was confident in the Know Your Way plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe the plan will be successful, not saying it is going to be perfect, not saying we are not going to have challenges, not saying we are not going to have to pivot,\u201d said Chief Russell.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This project will help the city meet its state-mandated housing requirements of having a plan in place to add over 17,000 housing units by 2029.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for Winger, when he asked if the city could keep his family safe during an emergency, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think they have the ability to keep the family safe, I think they would try as hard as they possibly could but I think everything falls on us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the vote on March 3, he filed for a rehearing, and if approved, that would have restarted the voting process.<\/p>\n
The rehearing was denied by the City Council, ultimately solidifying the Festival Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014\u00a0For months, residents have been battling with Anaheim City Council members over a proposed housing project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,111403,5997,16461,7,100978,1011,13,5999,5996,535],"class_list":{"0":"post-250153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-app-housing","12":"tag-app-local-state-politics","13":"tag-app-wildfires","14":"tag-california","15":"tag-cody-taylor","16":"tag-housing","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-socal-what-you-need-to-know","19":"tag-vod","20":"tag-wildfires"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}