Land-Use Decisions Reflect Desire for Controlled Growth

Does Tustin, which approved 8,000 new housing units Monday, favor growth more than Costa Mesa, which on the same day rejected a major development project? Or San Clemente, where voters recently voted down a pro-growth ballot measure?

No, say participants in a spate of controversial land-use decisions made in the last three weeks.

The actions may seem contradictory, but officials and residents involved in the actions say they actually share a common desire: They favor growth, but only if it is highly controlled. Indeed, the politics of limited growth influenced the Board of Supervisors’ selection Tuesday of a semi-industrial site near Anaheim Stadium for a new county jail. The area has the lowest population density of the five considered, and construction of a jail there would preempt higher-density commercial development.

The board, in part, responded to the so-called “nimby syndrome,” a reference to people who say a new project is needed but “not in my back yard.”

Anaheim officials didn’t want the new jail in their city, but there are fewer residential backyards near the chosen site than elsewhere.

However, observers said Tuesday that there are factors that make the San Clemente, Costa Mesa, Tustin and jail-site decisions stand on their own, outside the context of any long-term political trend. Among these factors:

- San Clemente has a large number of retired persons who are politically active and react strongly to proposed development.

- A homeowners group favoring slow growth has made significant inroads in Costa Mesa politics and could take a third--and controlling--council seat in the next election.

- The Tustin project was approved only after major concessions by the developer, the Irvine Co., and it drew a stronger reaction from residents outside the city in neighboring county territory than from council members’ own constituents.

- While county supervisors each had political liabilities involving potential jail sites in their districts, one supervisor--Board Chairman Ralph B. Clark--is retiring and will not have to face voters this year. The jail site selected Tuesday is in Clark’s district.

In San Clemente, the issue was an initiative aimed at limiting developers to a total of 500 new housing units per year. Voter approval curtailed plans for four backcountry projects that involve almost 8,000 acres. The vote was seen as a reflection of growing hostility countywide toward development.

Meanwhile, the Costa Mesa City Council by a 5-0 vote Tuesday night accepted the withdrawal of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons’ plan for a 32-story skyscraper and office complex. Councilman Donn Hall, chief proponent of the project, was almost defeated in a city election two years ago by a candidate supported by Mesa Action, a homeowners group strongly critical of Segerstrom’s plans. Hall, realizing he did not have enough votes for approval, successfully moved to withdraw the project from consideration.

“I think there is a trend in Costa Mesa to stop any radical change or any radical development,” said James Aynes of the 2,000-member Mesa Action group. “With the Segerstrom project we were dealing with a building twice as tall as any other building in Orange County. . . . There would be massive transportation problems accompanying the project. On the other hand, if it’s low-density residential, we’d be more likely to go with it.”

John Gardner, also of Mesa Action, said slow-growth advocates are highly organized in Costa Mesa and use computerized data bases and mailing lists to communicate with local residents.

“The developers and the real estate people are very organized, very upbeat--they’re the booster types,” Gardner said. “What they didn’t realize is that the cost of communicating with voters has been made affordable to anyone with a personal computer. . . . Development decisions have become more democratized. . . . Council members are not as anonymous as they once were.”

Gardner complained that Segerstrom and other developers envision an urbanized Costa Mesa serving as a “downtown” for all of Orange County, with more than 15 million square feet of new office space. “Now that’s absolutely enormous. It’s more than what downtown Atlanta has. The transportation arteries in Costa Mesa cannot handle that, and the residents have a much more conservative vision for their city.

“The developers grab their 20% (profit), investors looking for tax shelters get the buildings, and the residents get left with the problems,” Gardner said.

He added that Orange County residents seem to realize instinctively now that many developments are approved and built long before the infrastructure, such as highways, is there to support them.

The slow-growth movement comes against the backdrop of spectacular changes in the way Orange County land is used. Industrial use, for example, has increased about 60% since 1972, while the number of acres devoted to residential, recreational and infrastructure uses (including transportation) has risen only about 30% in the same period, according to county government reports.

Newport Beach-based political consultant Harvey Englander said that while San Clemente is “definitely in the ‘nimby’ movement,” in Costa Mesa the problem was that a huge commercial complex was being proposed for an area that already has a lot of commercial properties and that “the nearby residents genuinely rebelled.”

Englander said developers generally can assume that they will lose to project opponents if they fight local residents instead of working with them.

Meanwhile, Tustin’s approval Tuesday night of a major housing development with a golf course could be expected, Englander said, because it was a skillfully negotiated, well-packaged project from a company respected for its planned communities.

Tustin Councilwoman Ursula Kennedy, the only council member to vote against the project, said she did so because she believed that the proposed housing density was too high. But she said the vote could not be considered a setback for slow-growth advocates in Tustin because the Irvine Co. made many concessions and changed its plans many times to accommodate the desires of local residents.

But Kennedy added:

“I think the council was also aware that it was a politically safe decision because almost all the objections we heard were not from people who live in Tustin but from people who live in the neighboring unincorporated territory to the east, and they don’t elect members of our council.”

Comparing the vote in Tustin to the decision in Costa Mesa or the tough controls adopted in San Clemente is difficult, said Dave Ellis, a political consultant who managed the successful 1984 campaign to defeat Proposition A, a proposed 1-cent sales tax for highway and transit projects.

“You have to separate commercial development from residential,” he said. “And in Tustin, you were dealing with only one company, the Irvine Co., instead of four like in San Clemente.”

But Ellis said public officials must realize that, in today’s political climate, they run serious risks with every pro-development vote they cast.

He cited a survey taken before the Proposition A vote in 1984 that showed 79% of the respondents want growth slowed or stopped.