Builder to Seek Room for Town Center Additions

C.J. Segerstrom & Sons is preparing to ask Costa Mesa officials to increase the allowable building area at South Coast Plaza Town Center to make way for another office tower and a luxury hotel.

The proposed expansion of Town Center, now a cluster of office buildings, restaurants and theaters across Bristol Street from South Coast Plaza, would “finish off” the development, a Segerstrom official said, and bring its total square footage to 3.2 million.

“In order to finish the master plan of the Town Center, which has been in effect since 1978, we have room for one luxury hotel and one approximately 400,000-square-foot office building,” Malcom Ross, Segerstrom’s director of planning and design, said Friday.

The hotel, he said, would have about 335 rooms and be directly south of the Performing Arts Center. The office building would rise 21 stories at Anton Boulevard and Avenue of the Arts.

The city’s master plan now allows no more than 3 million square feet of development at the Town Center.

Town Center now has a total of 2.4 million square feet and includes the Imperial Bank building, the Center Tower, the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel and the South Coast Repertory Theatre. The development is bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the south, Sunflower Avenue on the north, Bristol Street on the west and Avenue of the Arts on the east. Ross said the company had not decided what it would do if the city refuses to increase the maximum square footage from 3 million to 3.2 million.

Monday night, Segerstrom officials will ask the City Council to authorize the city Planning Department to begin an environmental impact study of the proposed office tower and hotel. If the council agrees, public hearings on the project could begin as soon as late summer or early autumn, said Mike Robinson, principal city planner for Costa Mesa.

Sandy Genis, vice president of the Costa Mesa Residents for Responsible Growth, a chief Segerstrom adversary, said she had not seen the project plans and was withholding judgment.

The group has been a strong opponent of Segerstrom’s proposed Home Ranch development, proposed a short distance east of Town Center along the San Diego Freeway.

Genis said she might be able to support the new idea for Town Center if it somehow reduced the Home Ranch project.

“If they were going to take some of the more inappropriate portions of Home Ranch and put them up at Town Center, that may make more sense,” she said. “But if it’s more onto the pile, I don’t know.”

Diane Goldberger, treasurer of Residents for Responsible Growth, said she had no objection to the developer’s Town Center plans.

Stressing that she was only speaking for herself, Goldberger said: “Personally, I think that’s appropriate over there. That’s our main concern with the Home Ranch development; what they want to do there is inappropriate for that site.”

Home Ranch is in an area with a “suburban atmosphere,” she said. But Town Center, she said, has a “metropolitan feeling.”