The Towers

The Towers is filed with the city as Mutual 50 and by the association as Mutual No. Fifty, 311 condominiums stacked in two fourteen-story buildings on 11.5 acres at the western edge of Laguna Woods Village, addressed on Paseo del Lago West. The association publishes floor plans from studios up to three bedrooms, with terraces on selected residences. The whole of it sits on a single parcel, and this is the only ground in Laguna Woods the city zones Residential Towers and the only part of the Village its general plan designates High Density Residential rather than Residential Community.

Ownership is condominium and the corporation is not for profit. The Towers is self-managed by its own professional management team rather than by the Village's managing agent, under a five-member board elected by owners to staggered three-year terms, and the association publishes dining and housekeeping among the services included. It states plainly that this is an independent living community which does not provide medical or caregiving services. Residents share the Golden Rain Foundation's seven clubhouses, five pools, two fitness centers, two golf courses, the ten court tennis complex, the Equestrian Center and the private bus system, and the Census places all 11.5 acres in Saddleback Valley Unified, whose locator returns Olivewood Elementary at 396 students for addresses tested inside the boundary.

Ross Cortese bought a portion of the Moulton Ranch in 1962, ground the city describes as dry farming and cattle grazing with scattered ranch buildings before that decade, and Leisure World Laguna Hills received its first residents in 1964. The Towers is the third of the Village's housing corporations and it is filed as Mutual No. Fifty, against the original 21 cooperative mutuals absorbed by United Laguna Woods Mutual and the original 38 absorbed by Third Laguna Hills Mutual. It is also the only one the city records as a single parcel carrying a single building footprint.

It is the only part of the Village built upward, and the zoning code was written to say so. Residential Towers is one of eleven districts in the code and it is applied to these 11.1 designated acres and nowhere else in Laguna Woods; the rest of the Village carries Residential Community, which the general plan holds at densities consistent with the Rossmoor Leisure World Planning Community District Regulations. The city itself arrived much later than the buildings: Laguna Woods incorporated on March 24, 1999 as Orange County's 32nd city, after voters approved cityhood at a special election held on March 2 of that year.