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Irvine Panel Paves Way for Fluor Corp. to Develop Site

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Times Staff Writer

Dismissing the recommendations of city planners opposed to further development of Fluor Corp.’s 162-acre site, the Irvine Planning Commission approved a compromise under which development could eventually get under way.

The advisory vote late Thursday paves the way for resolution by the Irvine City Council of an issue which has been dormant since March, when the council ordered the city’s Community Development Department to look into laws governing how businesses may develop their land.

The study was prompted after Fluor and the Trammell Crow Co., which purchased the Fluor property at Jamboree Road off Interstate 405 earlier this year for $340 million, unveiled plans for the site that would include office buildings, hotels and restaurants.

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Those plans led to a showdown between the two companies and the city, which maintained that under the 1982 Irvine Business Complex ordinance, Fluor was permitted to only expand on the site to serve its own corporate needs. Officials of Fluor and Trammell Crow, on the other hand, argued that the ordinance allows them to build whatever they want on the site.

Under the plan approved by the Planning Commission on Thursday, more than half a dozen Irvine-based companies, which received entitlements for future development of their headquarters sites, would be able to use those entitlements to expand in any way they wish, instead of only for their own use. The plan contains the provision that the companies submit to the usual city review and approval process.

“We are very encouraged by the action last night, and we feel that real progress was made,” a Fluor spokesman said Friday.

Although the commission vote was an expression of its support for changes in the 1982 IBC ordinance that would clearly spell out Fluor’s and Trammell Crow’s rights to develop the property, Irvine’s city charter permits only the City Council to enact such changes.

The council is expected to act on the proposed ordinance changes in mid-January. Under Irvine’s charter, ordinance changes require two votes by the council and a 30-day waiting period before becoming law. The revisions proposed by the Planning Commission could take effect by early March.

However, because any development of the Fluor property would require city plan reviews as well as the approval of the Planning Commission before a permit for construction would be granted, it could take as long as a year after the council vote before work on the development might begin, said Jay Tashiro, an Irvine municipal planner.

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