IRVINE : Industrial Sector Apartments Rejected

The Planning Commission has turned down a developer’s request last week to build an 87-unit apartment complex in the city’s industrial sector.

Commissioners said they didn’t want to allow an apartment complex next door to several manufacturers using potentially hazardous chemicals on a daily basis. The McGaw Apartments would have replaced a vacant industrial building on McGaw Avenue about 600 feet east of Jamboree Road.

The site is within 1,000 feet of nine businesses using hazardous chemicals in their manufacturing processes.

“I don’t think you could find a much more incompatible site (in Irvine) for residential,” Planning Commission Chairman Richard Salter said Thursday.

A representative of the developer, the Schroeder Co. in Corona del Mar, could not be reached for comment.

The site is inside the Irvine Business Complex, an area designated “mixed use” because of the area’s mix of offices, manufacturers and homes. Already located in the area, at Jamboree and Kelvin Avenue, is the 403-unit Charter Apartments complex that the city approved in 1986. That project was approved before strict concerns for nearby hazardous chemicals were taken into account in the planning process, community development director Robert C. Johnson said.

“The awareness of hazardous materials, the rules and regulations we follow now, have changed since Charter was approved and built,” Johnson said.

The idea behind placing homes close to businesses is to encourage workers to live close to their jobs and reduce reliance on the automobile for daily travel. But Salter said the idea just won’t work in most places in the Irvine Business Complex because of the abundance of manufacturers using dangerous chemicals, making loud noises and bringing in truck traffic.

“That’s exactly why we separate land-use into industrial areas and residential areas,” he said. “To me, that was the crux of this thing.”

Salter said he would have voted against the Charter Apartments project had he been on the commission.

Planners reviewing the proposed McGaw Apartments had said that potential problems with noise and possible chemical exposure could have been solved by mandating certain requirements. One requirement would have been for the developer to notify every resident of the complex of all hazardous material users within 1,000 feet of the building and make sure all residents received a copy of an emergency plan should one of the area businesses release a dangerous amount of chemicals into the air.

If technologically possible, the builder also would have been required to install a rooftop system to sniff the surrounding air and sound an alarm if chemical levels reached a harmful point.

It would have been the first such system installed in Irvine.

The builder also would have to request local businesses to call the apartment complex if they spilled a hazardous amount of materials.

Planning commissioners just weren’t convinced that the precautions would have been enough of a safeguard for residents, Commissioner Kate Clark said.