Segerstrom Offers to Cut Home Ranch by a Third

Costa Mesa’s slow-growth proponents are questioning the sincerity of an offer by C.J. Segerstrom & Sons to reduce the size of the controversial Home Ranch development by one-third.

“The new plan doesn’t change the original project,” said Dave Wheeler, the only Costa Mesa City Council member who has opposed the project since its inception three years ago. “I think (Segerstrom) will probably be back in the future” to alter the plan again.

Segerstrom officials offered to reduce the 3.1-million-square-foot development to 2 million square feet. The City Council is expected to vote on that scaled-down plan June 22.

And on that same day, the council probably will set Sept. 20 as the date for a citywide referendum vote on the larger Segerstrom plan, Mayor Donn Hall said.

If the referendum fails, construction could begin immediately on the larger project. If the referendum succeeds, it would halt the original, larger project for a year, and Segerstrom could return with yet another proposal, Hall added. Or, the company could begin work on this latest plan, he said.

The 94-acre development site is bounded by Fairview Road, the San Diego Freeway, Harbor Boulevard and Sunflower Avenue.

Wheeler said Segerstrom’s latest plan is a way to speed construction of the first phase of the development, One South Coast Place, which is planned to house IBM offices.

“It’s a very slick ploy to get the IBM project in,” Wheeler said.

Segerstrom officials, however, said the reduction was offered out of “respect for the community’s concern about development.”

“We have looked very hard at the economics involved, and we have cut the project size as much as we can,” Segerstrom planner Malcolm Ross said in a prepared statement. “Our goal is to reduce the square footage to the absolute minimum that is economically supportable in order to meet the concerns that people have about growth and development.”

Company spokeswoman Rita Feichtmann said the new plan would reduce office space from 2.5 million square feet to 1.6 million; a planned hotel would be reduced from 400 rooms to 300; retail space would be reduced from 90,000 square feet to 71,000; a 15,000-square-foot day-care center would be untouched, and a 75,000-square-foot health club would be eliminated.

In addition, Feichtmann said, the height limit for the north side of the development would be lowered from five stories to four. But One South Coast Place will be unaltered and will include a 12-story building and 20-story tower which has sparked protests from nearby residents.

“I would be interested to see if they could come up with something a little lower in terms of the building towering over the people, imposing itself on top of the residents,” said Sandy Genis, vice president of Costa Mesa Residents for Responsible Growth.

Genis said she had not reviewed the plan and did not know whether her homeowners’ group would oppose it. But she said it appeared promising.

“We are not sure that that would take care of all the concerns we have with intensity and traffic, but it seems that it is a step in the right direction,” she said.

But she added that her group would look for guarantees in the plan that developers or future city governments could not alter.

“Based on the past behavior of our City Council, I haven’t seen a high level of integrity as far as playing it straight with the citizens,” Genis said.

Segerstrom officials say the company is sincere in its offer and has done its best to respond to community concerns.

“This is obviously a very major concession,” Ross said. “It is one that will drastically reduce the revenue we can expect to receive from development of the Home Ranch property in future years.”

The original proposal in 1986 was for a 3.2-million-square-foot development that would cost $400 million and provide 11,000 jobs. Though the Costa Mesa City Council and city Planning Commission supported the project, it became an issue with slow-growth groups, who brought construction to a halt in 1987 with a referendum petition.