How Development Pact Affects Coastal Accord

The most recent construction plan for the Irvine Coast was sealed last week with a 4-1 vote by the Board of Supervisors, approving a development agreement intended to protect the project from land-use changes for 20 years.

The development agreements are a new and highly controversial tool that the county has used several times in the last year to give developers a legal certainty that they can build their projects.

The agreements have been attacked, however, by supporters of the slow-growth initiative, which is scheduled to be considered by voters June 7. The foes called the agreements attempts to circumvent the effects of their measure by insulating specific projects from the initiative’s reach.

Eight of the 16 agreements adopted in the last year have already been challenged in court by groups arguing that they are an unconstitutional interference with the county’s ability to make land-use decisions in the future.

But many longtime opponents have endorsed the development agreement for the Irvine Coast project.

“A lot of members of our group, when the development agreement was raised, were not delighted,” said Terry Watt, attorney for the environmental coalition that fought earlier plans for the project, then participated in its redesign.

“But on the other hand, it (a development agreement) is a mechanism that, properly used, can give assurances on both sides and can assure public benefits that might not otherwise be made.”

Development agreements are guarantees from the county that zoning and other land-use restrictions applied to a specific project will not be changed for a certain period. In return, the developer pays for such public improvements as roads, libraries, sheriff’s stations and fire departments, which it otherwise would not provide.

For example, under the Irvine Coast development agreement:

* The Irvine Co. will build a 1.5-mile extension of San Joaquin Hills Road four lanes wide rather than just two, as otherwise would have been required by the county. The two extra lanes will cost about $8.5 million.

* The company also agreed to pay $6.2 million toward the county’s 1990 Action Plan, a program to close gaps between existing main roads in the south county.

* It will also pay about $1.7 million for a new fire station and contribute about $270,000 more to a library, sheriff’s station and child-care center to be built in the project area.

* The company will pay for about $22.7 million in improvements that might otherwise have been charged to county government.

Besides improvements required by the development agreement, the Irvine Co. will be required to pay for $64.7 million in road improvements under the Local Control Plan approved for the project by the California Coastal Commission.

Under the Local Coastal Plan, the company will be required to build a major thoroughfare--Pelican Hill Road--through the project and to widen Coast Highway along the frontage of its property.

But significantly, the development agreement will also require the company to make those two sets of Local Coastal Plan improvements--costing a total of about $56 million--before the project is completed.

The improvements are scheduled to be completed by 1990. Without the agreement, those improvements would probably have been phased in over 15 years.

Development agreements were made possible by a 1981 state law that was encouraged by cities, counties and developers. The law followed court decisions in which judges gave local governments the right to change projects even after they are approved.

Those court decisions caused significant headaches for developers and problems for the banks that put up large sums for their projects.

“Say we spent $45 million to build Pelican Hill Road and a new Board of Supervisors comes in and says, ‘We don’t want 2,600 homes,’ ” said Carol Hoffman, a senior director of the Irvine Co. “That money could be lost. . . . Without a developer agreement, there is not enough incentive for us to proceed.”