Segerstrom Development Again Draws Crowd to Council Debate

After suffering its first rejection of development plans in Costa Mesa more than a year ago, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons returned to the City Council Monday night and met another overflow crowd ready to debate its revised office tower project along the San Diego Freeway.

This time the earlier proposal for one 32-story office tower, potentially the tallest building in Orange County, had been cut into a 20-building and a 12-story building with the same total floor space.

Segerstrom officials said the redesign had quieted the concerns of neighbors who had angrily attacked the original proposal as too intense a commercial development too near their homes.

But some opponents said they are just as upset about the new plan and said they plan an initiative or referendum campaign to overturn the approval they expected the council to bestow.

5,000 Flyers Mailed

Jim Aynes of Mesa Action, a group favoring slow growth, said his group mailed 5,000 flyers to area residents last week that warned: “Unless we do something, the developers plan to turn Costa Mesa into a DOWNTOWN L.A. or New York City.”

“We’ve gotten a couple of hundred of the flyers back,” Aynes said. “Ninety percent of the returns are saying they want to have an initiative. Slightly less are saying that they want to have a referendum.”

Vice Mayor Orville Amburgey, who favors the project, said the office complex is the best use of the land. “We’ve got the best we are going to get,” he said in an interview before the council meeting. “For sure there are not going to be any more lima beans there.”

The new, two-building plan would connect the buildings with a circular pavilion containing an art museum, restaurant, athletic club and cafe. A parking structure for 2,260 vehicles also is planned, along with a child-care center for 120 infants, toddlers and preschoolers of parents working in the project.

Only the First Phase

The 722,400-square foot development will be located on a 16-acre parcel east of Harbor Boulevard just north of the San Diego Freeway. The plan calls for devoting 11 of those acres to open space.

The project is only the first phase of a 98-acre development planned by Segerstrom.

The project could be built by December, 1989, Segerstrom officials said. Its major tenant would be International Business Machines Corp., which would locate its regional headquarters there, according to Malcolm C. Ross, Segerstrom’s director of planning and design.

More than 300 disgruntled residents turned out for last year’s meeting, and when it became apparent that the council would reject the plan, Segerstrom officials withdrew it.

That marked Segerstrom’s first major defeat before the Costa Mesa City Council. In the past, the city had approved half a dozen major Segerstrom projects, including the successful South Coast Plaza shopping mall, an extension of that mall and Town Centers I and II.

After last year’s defeat, Segerstrom mailed a survey to Costa Mesa residents requesting ideas on how to redesign the project. Ross said opposition to the project lessened because of the new design. Asked for a show of hands from the audience Monday night, more than half indicated that they favored the new proposal.

“Before it was a landmark building--a great presence--but now it has been redesigned so that its presence is as slight as it can be,” Ross said.

But Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle said she still had “some grave reservations about the traffic. I like the rest of the project, but the traffic problem bothers me a lot.”

Segerstrom officials say they will finance street widening and traffic signals, a major concern of some residents and city officials.