Costa Mesa : Segerstrom High-Rise Passes Planning Board

Despite neighborhood protests about traffic congestion and height, the Costa Mesa Planning Commission on a 4-1 vote recommended that C. J. Segerstrom & Sons be given approval to build a 32-story office building, the tallest structure in the county. The City Council will vote on the project March 17.

The five-member commission also approved preliminary plans for a 98-acre business complex where the high-rise and future projects will be built.

“The residents would like to see it remain a bean field,” said Planning Commission Chairman Walter Davenport, referring to the Segerstrom-owned lima bean fields east of the San Diego Freeway between Fairview Road and Harbor Boulevard. “We certainly as a city can’t force them to do that.”

Davenport added that the controversial high-rise, known as One South Coast Place, would be built far enough away from residences so as not to block homes from receiving sunlight.

In a separate but related development, the proposed 32-story office building has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a spokesman for the Segerstroms.

The FAA’s regional office in Lawndale issued a “Determination of No Hazard” Monday for low-flying aircraft along the San Diego Freeway provided that the Segerstrom Co. agreed to decrease the office building’s height by 19 feet.

“The taller building would have required review by the FAA’s Washington office,” said Tom Santley, a spokesman for Segerstrom. “We were anxious to expedite matters, so we dropped the height.”

Santley said the height decrease will affect the economics of the building.

“Our architectural firm . . . is analyzing ways to accommodate the loss and we will have a solution shortly,” Santley said. Despite the height decrease, the building will remain 32 stories and, at 492 feet, will be the tallest structure in Orange County. By comparison, the Center Tower next to the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa is 21 stories high.

A potential benefit of the decreased height will be the elimination of minimal shadowing of adjacent residential neighborhoods by the office building in the late afternoon during mid-winter, Santly said.

The initial environmental impact report prepared for One South Coast Place indicated that during the mid-winter season, late afternoon shadows would extend 50 feet into residential areas east of Fairview.

“Since, at that time of day, every one foot of building casts a shadow of five feet, reducing the height of the building by 19 feet should eliminate entirely the minimal shadows noted in the EIR,” Santley said.

The 32-story office building will contain 677,000 square feet of offices on 20 acres with 15 of those acres set aside for landscaped park space.