Tustin : Development Plan Calls for 9,000 Housing Units

Residents next week will get their first chance to view a preliminary development plan that calls for 9,000 housing units to be built in the city over the next 15 years.

The Specific Plan for 2,000 acres of Irvine Co.-owned land in east Tustin would add about 25,000 people to the city if the area is fully developed, according to Donald Lamm, city director of community development. Tustin’s current population is 41,000. Construction would begin as early as the winter or spring of 1986.

Residents will have an opportunity at a March 27 Town Hall meeting to comment and fill out a questionnaire that will be considered during the preparation of the environmental impact report for the project, Lamm said.

The project’s site, north of Interstate 5 and bordered by Browning Avenue and Myford Road, is currently a mix of row crops and citrus trees that has remained rural because its development has been restricted under the state’s Williamson Act, designed to preserve agricultural areas. That status expired on one of three parts of the land last year, and expires in 1986 and 1988 on the remaining two.

Lamm said the plan calls for “a balanced community.” Included would be schools, parks and shopping centers, with the latter generating enough tax revenue to offset the city’s cost of providing services, he said, adding, “It will not be a burden at all on the existing residents of the city.”

Population density on the parcel, which represents one-fourth to one-third of Tustin’s total area, “will probably be greater” than that in the developed part of Tustin, Lamm said. The types of housing units would range from apartments to estate homes on two-acre lots, he added.

One part of the plan calls for auto dealerships and 1,200 housing units in a 100-acre area bordered by Interstate 5, Bryan Avenue, Browning Avenue and the Jamboree Boulevard extension. The auto center has been approved and is projected to produce $1.3 million annually in city revenues. The proposed housing units, which would include single-family homes, attached single-family homes and apartments, face a Planning Commission hearing in April.

The plan also includes a high school, junior high and from four to six elementary schools to be built by the Tustin Unified School District. It also calls for three community parks to be built on 75 acres that would be donated by the Irvine Co.

Lamm said that he and the city’s three other planners worked with the Irvine Co. at the company’s expense for two years in developing the project.

The meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Community Center, 300 Centennial Way.