IRVINE : Business Complex Given Tentative OK

Despite objections from neighboring cities, the City Council has tentatively approved a plan that will allow increased development at the sprawling Irvine Business Complex, an area that stretches across the entire west side of the city and approaches the size of downtown Los Angeles.

The council’s approval Tuesday night requires a second vote before taking effect. If finally approved, the plan will allow the building intensity of the business complex to increase from 48.3 million square feet to about 55.8 million square feet.

Councilman Bill Vardoulis, who is part owner of a business in the complex, did not participate or vote on the matter because of a possible conflict of interest.

The council’s vote caps three years of planning and public hearings to try to solve development-related problems in the Irvine Business Complex. The complex stretches from Newport Beach starting near John Wayne Airport to Tustin and includes many of the city’s high-rise office towers.

Planning the future of the Irvine Business Complex became a high city priority in 1989 after officials discovered that they had approved more than 50 million square feet of development when the city’s own regulations allowed 48.3 million.

The violation meant that the area would one day have more traffic than existing and future roads could handle. Planners spent years debating how to accommodate the increased traffic and how to be fair to landowners in the area who had not yet developed their property.

Since future traffic posed the biggest problem, the solutions were built with cars in mind. The council’s approved solution sets a development cap on each parcel based on how many vehicle trips the property may generate, rather than how many square feet the building could be.

Traffic planners also drafted proposals to widen streets and improve intersections to handle more traffic. They also suggested requirements, such as car-pooling, to reduce traffic.

The amount of traffic the Irvine Business Complex eventually would create is so large that neighboring cities would be affected, according to the city’s studies. Because of the large traffic impact, some of the developer-funded traffic improvements Irvine will make are located outside the city.

Neighboring cities, most notably Tustin, Santa Ana and Costa Mesa, have complained that Irvine’s plans to handle the increased traffic will fall short. Tustin officials, for instance, want Irvine to agree to pay for additional traffic improvements in their city.

Irvine officials, though, balked at the notion. “The city of Irvine should not be in a position to give a blank check to any of our neighbors,” City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. said.

The city will pay for its fair share of future traffic increases, Brady said, but no more than that.