IRVINE : Campus Houses Get Initial Council OK

After 4 1/2 hours of often angry public testimony and deliberation, the City Council on Tuesday preliminarily approved Christ College Irvine’s request to sell 40% of its hilltop campus to housing developers.

The council’s 3-1 decision will allow 154 single-family houses to be built on the east and west ends of the college’s 116-acre campus. The decision will require a second vote by the council later this month.

Councilman Bill Vardoulis abstained from the vote Tuesday because he lives in the city’s Turtle Rock neighborhood, where the college is situated among some of Irvine’s most expensive homes, and the building proposal could affect the value of his home.

Under the plan initially approved by the council, 69 houses may be built on 19 acres on the west side of the campus and 85 houses may be built on 28 acres to the east.

Most opposition to the proposal came from Turtle Rock residents, 15 of whom spoke against the proposed development. They argued that the homes will increase traffic and density in an area set aside for college use.

“I’m afraid this plan certainly won’t improve the college and it certainly won’t improve the quality of life” for Turtle Rock residents, said Ivan Bradford, 64, whose back yard is next to west side of the campus.

Eleven residents spoke in favor of the proposal, many of them students, faculty and staff of the college. About 270 people attended the hearing, including about 140 Christ College Irvine students.

Christ College Irvine, a 600-student liberal arts campus, asked the city to allow the homes on its property as a means of repaying the school’s original construction loan and to help set up a student scholarship fund. The college is under pressure from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to repay $25 million it advanced the school in 1964 to buy the property and build the campus, college President Ray Halm said.

Selling the property to a developer would bring in up to $30 million, Halm said. Without that sort of financial infusion, the college is at risk of being forced to shut its Irvine campus and move to a less expensive area of the state, he said.

Opponents of the development plan argued that it violates the city’s General Plan, a state-mandated document that outlines how the city will grow.

Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer, who voted in favor of the plan Tuesday, said the additional houses would be a minor “tweak” to the General Plan, but not a change of its intent.

Councilwoman Paula Werner was the sole vote against the development proposal.