111-unit expansion of Costa Mesa retirement community gets approval from Planning Commission

A proposed expansion of a Westside Costa Mesa senior-living facility is moving ahead after the city Planning Commission voted Monday to scrap a previously approved office building on the site in favor of more residential units.

The new project, approved on a 4-0 vote with Commissioner Jeff Mathews absent, will add a 111-unit independent- and assisted-living facility, a 1,700-square-foot fitness center and a 3,900-square-foot community events center to Vivante on the Coast, an upscale retirement community that opened in 2013 at 1640 Monrovia Ave.

The Planning Commission’s decision is final unless appealed to the City Council.

The additional units will help fill a local need for senior housing, said Cory Alder, president of Nexus Development Corp., the project’s applicant.

“We see a great demand, and we think another 111 units will be well-received,” he said Monday.

Nexus hasn’t announced a timeline for construction.

Vivante already has 185 units – 40 of which are designed for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. The additional facility will be four stories and have 15 studio units, 77 one-bedroom units and 19 two-bedroom units.

The new building will be on the northern 2.25 acres of the 6.8-acre Vivante site, which stretches between Monrovia Avenue and Babcock Street.

Planning Commission Chairman Robert Dickson said he thinks the expansion “is going to be an excellent addition to the community.”

Commissioner Colin McCarthy said the new project will be “less intense ... than what’s on the books right now” – a previously approved 42,000-square-foot office building that Nexus originally proposed for the site of the new living facility.

“It’s a wonderful place, and I think Costa Mesa can be proud of it,” McCarthy said of Vivante. “Expanding that operation is not a problem for me at all. I think it’s something we should accommodate and something we should go for.”

A handful of Costa Mesa residents questioned how the new construction might affect the existing residents at Vivante, particularly those in the memory-care units, and whether the new units might lead to parking issues on the site.

Alder said the construction will have some effects but that Nexus will work to minimize them.

“We have a $100-million investment in this and we’re from the community,” he said. “We’re not going to do something silly that’s going to be detrimental to what Vivante has built.”

The expansion will include surface and underground parking with a combined 125 spaces.

Plans also call for a dance studio, a cafe, a bar/lounge, activity rooms, a library/computer room, an art room, an outdoor plaza park and office space for management services.

Two residents questioned whether Hixson Metal Finishing – about a half-mile away in a section of Newport Beach that borders the Westside – might pose a risk to Vivante’s residents. One called the vicinity a “toxic area.”

State air-quality officials have taken Hixson to task in recent years over emissions of elevated levels of hexavalent chromium, which can cause lung, nasal and sinus cancers if inhaled in high concentrations, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Officials from the South Coast Air Quality Management District said at a meeting in February that toxic emissions have dropped significantly in the past year, though efforts were ongoing to continue lowering those levels.

Alder said Nexus stays on top of any potential issues.

Dickson said environmental regulators are “all over Hixson – they’re having meetings, they’re monitoring it constantly.”

Nexus “would not be operating if it was at a level that was considered hazardous,” Dickson said.

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Luke Money, lucas.money@latimes.com

Twitter: @LukeMMoney