General Plan Revision OKd : Home Ranch Project Passes Major Hurdle

The Costa Mesa City Council turned aside protests by advocates of slower growth and approved a plan early Friday that would allow construction of a $400-million complex containing Orange County’s tallest office building.

By a 4-1 vote, with Councilman Dave Wheeler dissenting, the City Council approved an amendment to its general plan that will allow C.J. Segerstrom & Sons to build its Home Ranch project, which will contain 3.1 million square feet of office space for 11,000 workers.

“This will be the death knell for people living in north Costa Mesa,” Wheeler told the audience of 150 people.

Home Ranch will be built in phases over the next 20 years on a 94-acre site bounded by Fairview Road, the San Diego Freeway, Harbor Boulevard and Sunflower Avenue. The first phase will contain the controversial One South Coast Place office complex that will be anchored by twin towers, one 20 stories high and the other 12. The complex is expected to bring an additional 47,000 cars a day to the area.

Wheeler charged that the street widening required for Home Ranch will cause the demolition of homes along Baker Street, which is south of the project. “There will be too much traffic, pollution and noise,” he added.

“This is not my vision for Costa Mesa,” Wheeler said. “If the people don’t do something in the next 30 days and seek a ballot initiative to overturn the council’s approval, then the quality of life will change so much that people might as well leave the city.”

Spokesmen for Citizens for Responsible Growth, which brought a lawsuit last fall that has blocked Home Ranch construction, said they will seek a referendum so city voters can overturn the approval, which came at 12:45 a.m. Friday after more than 12 hours of testimony that stretched over two public hearings.

The council majority was unmoved, saying a most Costa Mesa residents support the project.

Council members disputed claims by Wheeler and other project opponents that homes would have to be demolished soon to widen Baker Street. They acknowledged that ultimately homes will have to be removed but said that would not occur for at least a decade and only after lengthy public hearings.

‘Fear Mongering’

They said Wheeler and other project opponents were raising the specter of imminent demolition of homes to arouse public passions.

“I’m tired of this fear mongering that comes up every time we discuss development projects,” said Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle. She added that Baker Street will have to be widened regardless of whether Home Ranch is built but disagreed with Wheeler that this would take place in the next five years.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk tonight about maintaining the suburban nature of Costa Mesa,” she said, “but the truth is that this battle was lost 10 years ago. We are an urban area. All you have to do is to drive through the city to realize that.”

Hornbuckle continued: “The solution to our urban problems is to work on improving streets, sewers and other infrastructures. The Home Ranch proposal provides for these kinds of improvements.”

A First Step

Friday’s vote, while crucial to the ultimate completion of the project, was but a first step.

The general plan amendment must be approved by Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour, who last October blocked construction of One South Coast Place at the request of Costa Mesa Residents for Responsible Growth.

Seymour said that since One South Coast Place is the first phase of the Home Ranch project, the city has to specify not only how many square feet of commercial buildings can go up on the 16-acre One South Coast Place site but on the entire 94-acre Home Ranch site.

It will probably be another month before Seymour is able to rule on whether the council’s amendment of its general plan passes muster, City Atty. Thomas C. Wood said.

Another Hurdle

The project faces another legal hurdle. In a subsequent ruling last November, Seymour said another reason the project could not go forward was because the environmental impact statement that had been approved by the city had failed to consider alternatives to commercial development. Seymour said the report should have examined the feasibility of residential or other uses for the land.

This revised environmental impact statement is not scheduled to be presented to the City Council for another month, officials said.

A preliminary form of the environmental impact report, a so-called environmental assessment, was prepared by the city and planning consultants to support the general plan amendment. During lengthy public hearings that began Feb. 3 and were reconvened Thursday evening, Wheeler and spokesmen for many homeowners organizations said the environmental assessment prepared by a private planning firm under contract to the city is flawed.

Critics said the environmental assessment failed to provide enough details about how potential problems, such as increased traffic and possible flooding, would be solved.

Judge to Make Ruling

Wheeler, a lawyer, said these flaws could result in Seymour’s not approving the general plan amendment.

He was critical of the report’s discussion of the $1 million a year that the city would have to pay to provide police, fire and other services for the project. He acknowledged that this cost would be covered by Home Ranch developer fees and sales taxes.

But he argued that Costa Mesa could not spend this money without voter approval. Under the 1979 Gann Initiative, Costa Mesa now is at its $47-million annual spending limit. To exceed this spending cap, the city will have to get voter approval, he said.

“Without this voter approval, we will have to take this $1-million expenditure away from something else in the budget,” he said.

Override Possible

He acknowledged that city voters have approved overrides of the Gann spending cap before. “But I have been taught that it is prudent to not count your chickens before they are hatched,” he said. “I think it is irresponsible to rely on an event that may not occur when the fiscal results could be so major.”

Wheeler also disagreed with the environmental assessment’s conclusion that a project with less density than Home Ranch is not feasible because it would not generate the “trip end” fees needed to make necessary traffic improvements.

A trip end is based on projections of the number of times cars will enter and leave a project. For example, a project with 100 daily trip ends would pay $68,800 in fees because the city requires developers to pay a one-time fee of $688 per daily trip end. “The report rejects the alternative of mixed residential and commercial use because it would produce fewer ‘trip ends,’ and therefore fewer trip end fees to pay for necessary improvements,” Wheeler said.

Review Called Complete

But he said this conclusion is wrong. “When we approve a project, we figure out the dollar amount that will be needed to build supporting roadways,” he said. “We then divide that number of dollars by the number of streets that will have to be built.

“So, even if the trip ends produced by mixed use were cut in half, we still would be able to get the necessary improvements,” he said.