Land-Use Law Affecting Fluor Given Final OK

Despite a last-minute protest, the Irvine City Council on Tuesday gave final approval to a zoning ordinance change that will allow mixed-use development--including hotels, restaurants and high-rise office buildings--on Fluor Corp.’s headquarters site.

The council voted 4 to 0 for the change on the ordinance’s second reading. Without it, Fluor would have been limited to constructing additional buildings only for its own corporate uses on the 162 acres it sold last year to Trammell Crow, a development company, and Winthrop Financial Associates.

Leading a group of about 50 protesters, Mary Ann Gaido, who served on the council from 1976 to 1984, complained that the zoning change “opens up the potential of massive high-rise development” that would create tremendous traffic problems in nearby residential communities, including University Park, Turtle Rock and Culverdale.

To illustrate the high density of development that the new owners of the Fluor property hope to achieve, Gaido showed the council a video presentation that the owners are using to attract investors to the project. She complained that the video envisions 12 new office towers and the expansion of Michaelson Drive as a major arterial passing through Irvine neighborhoods.

However, council members retorted that the zoning change alone would not permit any more intense development than that already allowed under an ordinance that former City Council members, including Gaido, enacted in 1982.

“There is an obvious misunderstanding of the action the council took,” said Larry Hogle, the city’s director of community development. In fact, Hogle said, although the zoning change would allow some corporations like Fluor to build speculative office space on their properties, their development would be restricted to about half the density that is allowed in other business complexes in the city.