Costa Mesa : Panel’s OK to Build 550 Apartment Units Voided

The Planning Commission’s unanimous approval Monday night of a 550-unit housing project at Fairview State Hospital was nullified Tuesday morning when the city staff discovered that no public notice of the hearing was given.

“We haven’t figured out where the breakdown was,” senior city planner Mike Robinson said.

State law requires that notices of public hearings be placed in a local newspaper and that neighboring property owners be advised by mail at least 10 days before the meeting.

Robinson said the application was filed last year to build 550 apartments for hospital employees on the hospital’s northeastern grounds on Harbor Boulevard.

A Feb. 11 commission hearing on the project was postponed until Monday night because an environmental report was incomplete.

“We think maybe in the lag time somehow it just got bypassed,” Robinson said.

Planning commissioners will have to vote on the project again on March 25, after making the required legal notices. By then, three of the five commissioners will have been replaced by new appointees.

The second time around, some opposition could emerge, Robinson conceded.

When plans for the apartment project first surfaced in the late 1970s, neighboring apartment dwellers objected.

The project is geared primarily to provide affordable housing for employees of the state mental hospital on the 54-acre site.