Brea : Golf Course Development Due Before Planning Commissioners

A proposal to build two office buildings and a hotel on the Imperial Golf Course, within several hundred feet of a residential area--a plan that caused a ruckus at the last Planning Commission meeting--will be before the commission when it meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the City Council chambers.

The commission directed its own planning staff and the developers, Imperial Development Co. of Newport Beach, to come back with a more detailed account of how the adjacent neighborhoods would be affected if the eight-story hotel and two office buildings were built on 21 acres of the golf course.

Commissioners also asked the developers to propose alternative locations for the hotel.

Residents said they feared the project would bring noise and traffic, and perhaps disrupt the quiet atmosphere of the neighborhood.

Most of the 25 people who spoke during the first hearing asked the developers to build the hotel farther from their homes. The hotel, planned for the site of the golf course club house, would be 550 feet from the nearest house, said Jim DeStefano, city planner.

Combined with the office buildings, construction would total 284,000 square feet, he said. The golf course, without a club house, would remain.

Residents also expressed concern about the city’s plan to widen Castlegate Lane, now a dead-end street, and extend it to Imperial Highway.