IRVINE : Apartment Complex Plan Rejected Again

The Planning Commission late Thursday again denied a permit for a proposed 87-unit apartment complex surrounded by toxic chemical users, five months after its first rejection of the plan on the grounds that homes in the industrial area would be unsafe for residents.

The commission, which denied plans for the proposed McGaw Apartments by a 3-2 vote Thursday, had rejected the apartment plan last August, but was asked by the City Council to look at the project again after the developer appealed.

Plans for the apartments, proposed to be built on McGaw Avenue west of Jamboree Road, included a first-ever city requirement that the builder install rooftop sensors to sound an alarm warning residents to shut doors and windows in the event of a chemical spill. The apartment buildings’ air-conditioning and heating system also would have been required to be set to automatically close vents.

City planners initially endorsed that plan, but backed off earlier this week and recommended further environmental research. Sheri Vander Dussen, manager of the city’s Development Services division, said further research was necessary because no one had studied whether air that seeps normally into apartments might carry harmful gases into the homes during a chemical accident.

“It is a potential issue and it could present a potential health hazard,” Vander Dussen said.

Planners were also no longer certain that the rooftop sensors would be able to detect all hazardous gases that might leak from surrounding buildings, she said. Until those and other environmental questions can be studied further, she said, the city should not approve the apartment project.

Still, Planning Commissioner Lowell S. Johnson said he wanted the apartment complex built. The developer brought plans to the city three years ago and deserves approval, he said.

Commissioner Michael Ward also voted to approve the project, saying it was his most difficult decision since being appointed to the Planning Commission last year.

Scott Peotter, whom fellow commissioners appointed chairman on Thursday, said he believed the safety of residents of the proposed apartment building had been studied thoroughly. But he voted against the project, he said, because building more apartments in the industrial area could end up driving out businesses.

Irvine’s manager of environmental affairs, Michael S. Brown, said building homes close to manufacturing could bring stiffer environmental laws into play. If current or new businesses wanted to use a different manufacturing process, the city would have to evaluate it more closely because of the nearby homes, he said.

The McGaw Apartments would have been surrounded by a carpet manufacturer that operates 24 hours a day, a laboratory that uses 68 hazardous materials and two other manufacturers, according to city reports. There are no sidewalks on nearby streets because of the industrial nature of the area.

William Rice, president of Grimmway Development Co., which sought to build the McGaw Apartments, said Thursday he thinks the apartments would have been compatible in the industrial area.

“Other (residential) projects in the Irvine Business Complex are doing quite well,” Rice said. “People want to live and work close by.”