Monarch Summit I

Monarch Summit I covers 39.4 acres and holds 170 addresses on 172 parcels, at a median lot of 0.074 acres, the tightest in Laguna Niguel. Sixteen named streets run 1.45 miles inside the boundary, Spanish and Italian in flavor: Miramonte, Almara, Palma, Montesa, Carrara and Flying Cloud among them. The city's zoning layer gives 19.7 acres to open space against 12.3 acres of Planned Residential District, with 1.2 acres zoned park and recreation.

The association's own record with the city lists two clubhouses, two pools and two spas, the only doubled amenity set in the city's whole HOA register. The ground is high, running from 694 feet to 913 feet, second only to Laguna Sur, and the 2025 fire hazard layer rates the entire 39.4 acres Very High. The city records private streets without a gate. Parcels here split between two watersheds, 122 draining to Salt Creek and 50 to Aliso Creek.

Monarch Summit I went up almost all at once. The city's record shows 132 of its 168 dated homes finished in 1973, with the rest through 1977, which makes this some of the earliest housing in Laguna Niguel still drawn as its own community. In 1973 the place was not a city and would not be for another sixteen years, and the population had only passed a thousand in 1965.

The development that produced it began in 1959, when Cabot, Cabot & Forbes and Paine Webber formed the Laguna Niguel Corporation, bought the Daguerre share of the old Moulton ranch and hired the Viennese architect Victor Gruen to draw a 7,100 acre town plan. AVCO Community Developers bought the corporation in 1971, two years before these houses were finished, and Laguna Niguel Regional Park opened in 1973 as well.