Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

all right good evening welcome to the planning commission meeting of monday july 27 2026 i now call the meeting to order uh it's time for the pledge and tonight will be led by vice chair zick of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Ms. Green, would you please do the voice roll call?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The record will reflect that all commission members are present.

We have no announcements or presentations this evening, which takes us to public comments, not on a list of matters not listed on the agenda, will be heard at this time. These are items that are within our jurisdiction. I'll open public comment. If you'd like to come to speak, come to either podium. And if you're joining us by Zoom, please use the raise hand option. And if you're joining by phone, please press star nine. Give me one second, I'll get the mic set up.

okay good evening chair harlan and members of the commission i am liz dorn parker in my capacity tonight as president of the coast community college district board of trustees oh you've already put up the slide here you can see parcel a and b is the property the district owns and you can see the offices and all of the vacant land surrounding the building on Adams. The district office is in white and all the parking, the green space, including green space and parcel B. Our district offices on our land from the Santa Ana Army Air Base is transfer of ownership after World War II. And as such, historically, it has never been used for student education. Rather, it was always used for non-student purposes. So state government code allows this property zoning to fall under the city's purview and zoning designations. I would like the city to consider rezoning the property from its current institutional designation to high density housing. It was officially excluded from the Measure K rezoning plans, which we didn't realize that. There are no plans for student housing on that land. Any expansion or plans for that will be on the Orange Coast College campus in space that has already been set aside for that purpose. However, it is in a perfect location for high-density housing. It is surrounded by other apartment housing. In fact, right adjacent behind is housing that's four stories high. It has easy access to public transportation and biking safety lanes. Thank you very much, city. It's almost finished. And I might add, also easy access to amazing education across the street over at OCC. This change in zoning could then allow the district the opportunity to consider building housing to meet the demands of the city. If it can be rezoned to be included in the updated housing element for the state, that timing could be beneficial for both the city and the district. Thank you. And you can see parcel A is 3.70 acres. Parcel B is .67 acres. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Anybody else in chambers wish to speak in public comments? All right, Miss Green, do we have anybody on Zoom or by phone?

No, Mr. Chair.

Okay, I'll close public comments. Now it's time for planning commissioner comments and suggestions. Let's start with Commissioner Dixon this evening.

I'm going to hold off as we have a long meeting tonight. Okay.

All right. Commissioner Martinez, you're going to do the same?

No such thing. So a list of community events since we have a bigger crowd than normal tonight. This is what I usually do. Tomorrow is the last concerts in the park. Please go check it out at Fairview Park. The band Common Sense is performing. You can go enjoy the music and enjoy all the booths and the food trucks that are there. That's tomorrow at Fairview Park in the afternoon. Saturday, August 1st, is the Majestic Cycling Tournament. It's out by SoCo and the OC Mix. Specifically, it's at 3530 Highland Avenue. From 10 to 7 p.m., you can enjoy a fun cycling tournament. I went last year. They also had BMX displays. Admission is free, so you can go and enjoy the event. They shut down some of the roads up there in North Costa Mesa to do this. On next Tuesday, August 4th, is National Night Out. Please join CMPD at Lions Park from 5.30 to 7.30 for this fun community event. The next night, on Wednesday, August 5th, is the Motorhome Madness Demolition Derby. They are tearing up the OC Fair with their RVs, so please go and cheer on Costa Mesa Fire and Costa Mesa Police while fundraising for the Children's Hospital of Orange County. By August 5th, so this is going on now through August 5th, the city is doing a survey for the GIS strategic plan to help city maps and location-based services This includes any such things as dispatch and emergency services, planning and parks and everything else that uses maps in the city. The link to take the survey is in the bio of the city social media pages. Also just want to let the commission and staff know that I'm going to be virtual the next meeting on the 10th. BECAUSE I HAVE WORK SO UNFORTUNATELY SO WHATEVER NEEDS TO BE DONE TO PREPARE FOR THAT AND ALSO I'M VERY SORRY FOR MISSING OUT ON THE FTC COMMUNITY EVENT LAST WEEK. I WAS SICK AND I'M STILL RECOVERING SO IF I LEAVE THE ROOM IT'S BECAUSE I'M COUGHING.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. COMMISSIONER ANDREDI.

GOOD EVENING ALL. I'LL START A LITTLE BIT BACKWARDS. FIRST I WANT TO DO A HUGE SHOUT OUT AND APPRECIATION TO THE Costa Mesa Alliance for Better Streets. Yesterday, they set up a wonderful event, free community event to repair bikes in our community right in front of Lions Park. And again, I just want to, it's such a beautiful example of when community comes together, volunteers were standing in that hot, humid heat, fixing bike after bike after bike after bike, completely free, no questions asked. What is it, Friends of the Library were also there engaging the youth with free and affordable books. So again, just a wonderful example on how local organizations are making a big impact in our community and educating folks on how to ride safely in our streets. And piggybacking off after Commissioner Martinez, I highly encourage the community to come out for National Night Out next week. I think it's, again, a great opportunity to connect with our police force on a one on one basis. There's a lot of important issues that our police force tackle and getting to know one-on-one our force, our sergeants, our leaders on the street, it's absolutely valuable and also helps build that trust within our community and the community that they protect. That's all I have. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Klepak.

Nothing for me.

Okay. Commissioner Rojas.

No, nothing.

All right. Vice Chair Zick.

Thank you, I'll be brief. For Ms. Parker, you're probably aware to start the process for your request, probably a formal letter to the director of community services and maybe council would get that going. And you should be aware that inclusion in the housing element of those sites would then obligate you to build housing. You wouldn't have an overlay flexibility for institutional. So I'm sure you're aware of that as well. And then for the general public, since we have so many people here, I'd like to take an opportunity to point out that if you go to the city, if you want to be aware of what's going on in the city, a really easy way to do that, the best way that I can think of is to go to the city's website. And under the resident pull-down tab, you can sign up for e-notifications. And there's a menu of probably 30 different things that you can sign up to be notified about, whether it's planning commission meetings, council meetings, mobile home advisory, committee meetings, events, city news, et cetera. THAT WAY YOU DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE TO COME HERE TO GET A REPORT ON ALL THE ACTIVITIES GOING ON IN THE CITY. YOU'LL GET THAT INFORMATION EMAILED TO YOU. AND THAT'S ALL I'VE GOT. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. I HAVE NO COMMENTS THIS EVENING. I THINK WE'VE GOT A LONG AGENDA. SO THAT TAKES US TO CONSENT CALENDAR. WE HAVE ONE CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM TONIGHT. ALL OF THESE ITEMS ARE CONSIDERED ROUTINE AND WILL BE ACTED ON IN ONE MOTION UNLESS COMMISSIONERS OR THE PUBLIC HAS PULLED AN ITEM. Does anybody wanna pull the consent calendar item? All right, seeing none. Ms. Green, can you just read the title for that?

July 13th, 2026, unofficial meeting minutes.

May I have a motion? Trying to make a motion there, Commissioner Martinez. Let's just.

Oh, I'm sorry.

ALL RIGHT. WOULD SOMEONE LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION? I'M STILL NOT SEEING IT ON THE SCREEN. OKAY. MOTION BY COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ. SECOND BY COMMISSIONER DIXON. ASSUMING THIS IS TO?

MOVE TO APPROVE.

OKAY. ALL RIGHT. LET'S CALL FOR THE QUESTION.

MOTION CARRIES 7-0.

All right, we have two public hearing items tonight. Ms. Green, can you read the title for public hearing item number one?

Yes, this is tentative parcel map 2026-129 and 26-359 development review for a four unit common interest development at 215 and 223 Mesa Drive presentation by Mr. Yeager, senior planner.

All right. Before I turn it over to Mr. Yeager, any ex parte communications to report?

Okay.

All right. Mr. Dixon? No?

Okay. All right.

Mr. Yeager, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair Harlan, Vice Chair Zick, and the rest of the Commission. Chris Yeager, Senior Planner here with the City of Costa Mesa. The project before you tonight, it is a four-unit subdivision on two parcels. which are each currently developed with single-family homes and detached two-car garages. The property is on the south side of Mesa Drive, midway between Orange Avenue and Club Mesa Place. Directly across the street is the Santa Ana Country Club. The boundary with unincorporated Orange County, it is also across the street on the edge of the public right-of-way. Currently, the site is vacant. However, with the proposed project, it would be developing four single family homes. Part of the project here is the tentative parcel map, which you can see on the screen in front of you. The parcel map would subdivide the property into four fee simple lots with a common driveway. The base density proposed would be 9.3 dwelling units per acre. and the medium density residential land use designation in which the site occupies, it can allow for up to 12 dwelling units per acre. Each of the individual lots, it would range from approximately 3,300 square feet to about 4,300 square feet. The project does require development review. The recent ordinance adopted 202603 modified the municipal code to remove the requirement or the application type for design review and now requires any two-story construction on a residential zone to go through development review. So since the application, it is proposing the two-story construction and the residential zone, development review is required. Development review does not have specific findings. However, the project must adhere to specific review criteria outlined in the municipal code. AND THIS INCLUDES NEIGHBORHOOD COMPATIBILITY, SAFETY OF DESIGN AND CONSISTENCY, COMPLIANCE WITH VARIOUS PERFORMANCE STANDARDS IN ALIGNMENT WITH THE GENERAL PLAN OR ANY APPLICABLE SPECIFIC PLAN, WHICH IT IS NOT WITHIN. THE PROJECT SITE, IT IS BISECTED BY A PRIVATE DRIVEWAY, AND ON EACH SIDE YOU WOULD HAVE TWO DWELLING UNITS. THE FRONT TWO UNITS ARE PROPOSED TO BE ORIENTED TOWARDS THE STREET, SO THEIR FRONT DOOR An entry sidewalk would access the front sidewalk along Mesa Drive. All vehicular access to all units, it is provided through that driveway and each unit has two car garage with two open parking spaces in front of the garage. The back units, their access would be provided directly to that private driveway. As you can see on the screen, each unit does have its own private open space. The back units have a rear yard and the front units have a smaller rear yard with a larger front yard. Each unit, it does include a great room consisting of a living room, kitchen, and dining area. The first floor also includes one bedroom, one full bathroom, and a half bathroom, and the two-car garage. The project is required to provide two garage parking spaces and two open for each unit, and it does provide those. The second floor includes three bedrooms in each unit, an entertainment area, laundry room, three bathrooms, and one balcony connected to the primary suite. The balcony on the front units is facing the street. And the back balcony in the middle, or excuse me, the rear units is facing the rear towards the middle of the property. Producted as proposed with modern design elements. As you can see in the rendering, the elements feature large windows, mixture of various building materials, including vertical, Wood siding, horizontal wood siding, stucco, glass, metal elements, various roof lines. And you can see on the image, which was taken from Mesa Drive, that the units are oriented towards the street. The project does propose new landscaping throughout. The conceptual landscape plan, it did identify that the project would be providing 12 trees, which is deficient from the municipal code requirement, which requires 22 trees. A condition of approval has been added to the project, which would ensure that the project does meet the minimum tree planting requirements in the final landscape plan. So the final landscape plan will be reviewed as part of the building permit. And we will compare the total landscape area and make sure that the total number of trees is provided. One public comment was submitted on the project just a couple hours ago by the California Housing Defense Fund. And that comment just reminded the Planning Commission of the applicable state laws that apply to the project. But with that, staff is recommending that the Planning Commission find the project categorically exempt from CEQA. to approve the tentative parcel map and the development review. So that concludes my presentation. I am available to answer questions. The applicant, Josh Martinez, he was unable to make it tonight, but he is on Zoom as well, so he can answer questions via Zoom, and the project engineer is in the audience tonight. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Yeager. Commissioners, any questions of staff? Commissioner Dixon?

Thank you very much for your presentation. I just had a quick question regarding the condition of approval number 10 and the trees. Do we want to lock in the 22 on 10 or is there a possibility that the amount of landscaping as described in the staff report could be reduced thus affecting that tree count?

Yes. Great question. So it is possible that the landscape area could either increase or decrease slightly depending on the amount of hardscape provided. So I would recommend that we just keep it to the city requirement of 200, one tree per 200 square feet of landscaping.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Commissioner Martinez. Thank you. First, we changed the name of the department recently, right? Do we have to start changing conditions of approval to say, what's the new name now?

New name.

Community Development Director? Well, Director or Department, wherever it says that in the conditions of approval.

That can be updated in the final resolution.

Okay. Number two, if you can go to slide five. And Mr. Yang, our driveway standard, it's different than that, than what's on slide five, correct? You would need like a... A PIECE OF FLAT SIDEWALK AROUND THE DRIVEWAY APRON, IS THAT CORRECT?

SO COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ, I THINK YOU'RE REFERRING TO A DOUBLE GRADED DRIVEWAY INSTEAD OF A SINGLE GRADE DRIVEWAY IN WHICH THERE'S A SIDEWALK IN BETWEEN THE PRIVATE DRIVEWAY APRON WITH RESPECT TO THE ACTUAL DRIVEWAY AND THE PUBLIC RIDE AWAY. I THINK SO. OKAY. So if that be the case, I don't know if the if this is probably just a sketch.

Yeah, I mean, it looks like this on some of the other plans that that were provided to us. But I just want to make sure that when I'm assuming it's public works that will review driveway approach, that it'll be the typical driveway approach that we see now where there'll be some kind of flat sidewalk along the entire edge.

That is our typical standard in public works, a double graded sidewalk.

Okay.

Dry work. I'm sorry.

Thank you. And that should be it. Thank you.

Okay. Any last questions before I, oh, Commissioner Andrade.

Yes. Along the lines of landscaping, so just to triple check so it's clear in my mind, I kind of missed the discussion with Commissioner Dixon. The final count will be 22. However, just the design that they presented today is not is incomplete. Is that correct?

So so correct. The design submitted today, it does not comply with the requirement, which is one tree per 2000 square feet of landscape area. The final landscape plan, we will look at the total landscape area provided on the site. AND WHATEVER THAT NUMBER IS DIVIDED BY 200 WOULD BE THE REQUIRED TREE AMOUNT. CURRENTLY AS PROPOSED IT'S 22 BUT THAT MAY CHANGE SLIGHTLY EITHER DIRECTION.

GOT IT.

OKAY.

SO AN INCOMPLETE PLAN FOR NOW UNTIL THEY HAVE I GUESS THE DEVELOPER HAS A CLEARER PICTURE. AND SO THEN LOOKING AT THE ACTUAL PLANT LANDSCAPING DESIGN I'm noticing that some of these are the trees that are being proposed. And again, I don't know if we have a landscaping expert on this, but they don't seem to be or at least the ones that are going along the front yards are not or the front of the street along the street are not kind of shade providing. Right. They kind of look like little bonsais, not bonsais, but pretty short. Is that correct. I guess I'm thinking in alignment with our the next item in our agenda the climate action adaptation plan where we're talking about right a lot encouraging our developments to have help us expand our tree canopy. So maybe some of my thoughts now are kind of influenced by reading all that material. So it prompted me to kind of question the opportunities that we can have in this wonderful new development along the street to, again, help the city, allow us to continue to develop it, making our streets cooler, making it walkable. Are these the best kind of trees to recommend for development like that, considering the climate adaptation plan?

So that's a great question. The trees proposed in the front yard, they are African sumac, which are a dense canopy tree. They can grow up to 30 to 35 feet in height. So it would definitely provide shade along the sidewalk there.

Okay. All right. I didn't see those proposed. I'm looking at the L2 picture on the really long screen. So that's what left me. But is there some details somewhere else that I missed?

So yeah, so that's the that's the ruse lancea. Yeah, that's the botanical name. Common name is African sumac. And that's just a illustrative photo of what the tree can look like. Okay. And at maturity, they can reach up to 30 to 35 feet.

Okay, fantastic. Well, great. Um, is there opportunities again along thinking along the climate adaptation plan? Is there opportunities? Because when I look at the site plan on page eight of the report, those trees are not along the sidewalk. There's only like really short shrubs.

So the, the, the planting plan is on sheet L one of the plans. It's towards the back of your packet. The planting plan identifies where each tree is proposed. The rendering, most renderings don't typically accurately show landscaping. And then the site plan is just illustrative for the site itself.

How can we get accurate renderings for these proposals? I mean, it would save us a lot of time and follow-up questions if we had complete photos or accurate photos of what they would look like. Maybe that's more of a question for our applicant. But OK, so just to clarify, so those trees will go along the sidewalk, is that correct?

Correct. The landscape plan is showing four of the African sumacs in the front landscaped area, two on each side of the driveway.

But that's towards the middle, right? Right. Is it is that are these the two ones that you're referring to, the ones along the parking spaces?

No. So the parking spaces are the crepe myrtle, the flowering in your exhibit. There's four African sumacs proposed at the front of the property and two currently shown at the rear of the property.

Got it. OK. Again. I would love to ensure that as these opportunities come forward, especially as we're going to get closer to approve our climate adaptation plan that these development proposals and plans clearly indicate where all of this is going so that we have clear verification that we're following suit. That's it. Thank you. The next question is for the applicant.

OK. Thank you, Commissioner Andrade. Just for reference, L1 has the planting plan. So it shows exactly where those trees will be located. Mr. Zick.

Thank you. Quick question, Mr. Yeager. When was the planning application submitted?

So this specific application was submitted in January. There is a history with this site. There was a separate application submitted back in May of 2024. That project was reviewed and almost went to hearing. However, the project substantially changed. They redesigned and submitted the new project, which you see in front of you today.

Thank you.

All right. If there's no more questions for staff, I'll open the public hearing. Ms. Green, do we have the applicant on Zoom or phone? Okay. Mr. Martinez, can you hear us? yes loud and clear can you hear me sure um so just a few preliminary questions can you just state your name for the record and then let us know have you read the conditions of approval and do you agree to those yes yes i my name is josh martinez i agree with the uh

THE AGENDA APPROVAL HERE.

OKAY. THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY IF YOU WANT TO SAY ANYTHING MORE THAN WHAT STAFF HAS OFFERED, DON'T FEEL OBLIGATED, BUT IT'S YOUR CHANCE. AND THEN I'LL GIVE YOU AN OPPORTUNITY AT THE END OF PUBLIC COMMENT ALSO TO RESPOND IF YOU'D LIKE.

okay awesome um may i proceed yes go right ahead good evening good evening chair and commissioners and city staff my name is josh martinez with osa homes representing the applicant for 215 and 223 mesa drive thank you for the opportunity to have me speak this evening as you can see this project proposes four new detached single-family homes on two existing legal parcels throughout the review process we worked very closely with planning transportation public works and city staff to refine the design as needed one of the primary goals was to create a neighborhood friendly streetscape throughout the shared private driveway you see here and the garages are oriented away from the mesa drive through a 90 degree approach we're reducing the curb cups here and allowing the homes and landscaping not garage doors to define the frontage here architecturally four homes were designed with varied massing articulation residential detailing to create attractive cohesive development while giving each residence its own identity we appreciate the time and guidance city staff has provided throughout the entitlement process we believe this project reflects the collaboration and will provide four thoughtfully designed homes that prove the site's appearance circulation overall relationship to the neighborhood thank you for your consideration

Thank you. Commissioners any questions of the applicants. Commissioner Andrade.

Yes. Thank you so much. You know I love how you describe the project you're looking to make you know connected with the community community focused. And I've recently visited with some neighbors that live in a similar development like this one. And one of the biggest feedback pieces was, you know, again, we're in District 4, so not a lot of accessibility to parks. So it made me question, like, you have an opportunity, if you consider it in the development, to create a sort of kind of shared green space in the back of your property, you know, kind of, again, feeding into the concept of, making it open to neighbors, welcoming, you know, for access for those families that would be living there.

I'm sorry. Could you repeat that question?

Yeah. Have you considered any shared green space in your development?

You know, as far as getting a shared access in the rear, it's quite blocked off there. I would need to work with Public Works to see if there's some sort of shared driveway access or shared access from the public right of way. I think virtually the focus was just having the frontage, especially adjacent to the golf course there, allowing that space to be that sort of open space, shared landscape. But I do hear your question. I just don't know how the rear would be accessed just because it is blocked off by multiple residences nearby.

correct no and i apologize let me clarify just for the folks that would be choosing to buy into the properties not necessarily open to the public i mean not public facing but even for the for those that choose to live here to create a shared green space um in the back of the property so not for the public private yeah

Yeah, so that would be private. Correct. I'm not sure, actually. I think that would be something along the lines of our conditions approval, perhaps. This will be a private access, private roadway. So I think the notion would be if you're purchasing these homes, you as the homeowner can sort of decide what you like to do with your own private lot, per se. I'm just not sure if we can create a true private space if we do do that. Yeah. Okay.

Again, just an opportunity to create, build in a little more community into this great project that you're having. I appreciate the trees that are going along the sidewalk. It seems like you have a lot of green space in the back, you know, as you know, this is, these are, four bedroom count apartment so i imagine families um go moving into places like this so as a feature in your development and in support of the neighborhood centered development that you're trying to build i think it would be a great opportunity to have some shared green space in the back since you have the capacity but um again that's that's completely up to you just seem like a great opportunity that maybe you would want to consider and not miss

Totally understand. Yes, Commissioner. So I think our goal is to have each residence have its own dedicated private open space, which is provided there. They are usable, they are outdoor, and it's dedicated to the occupants. So the front and rear homes would have their own private yards as a normal single family homeowner would have. And it totally meets the city requirements. And of course, the appropriate separations we must maintain for planning purposes.

Okay, any other questions? All right, Mr. Martinez, I just have one quick, it's more of a comment. Chris, can you bring up slide eight? the elevation. Just a design note. I appreciate the overall design. I especially like how it's fronting Mesa and that you've tucked the parking behind. We haven't seen many designs like that, so I think that's a very nice treatment. The one thing that caught my eye, though, is for 215, the front unit, it almost looks like it's a garage door. This is for the unit on the right. I understand that there's the staircase behind that. I had to look at the plans for that. But I think it's handled a little bit better on the adjacent property. It just seems to read a little bit better as a larger staircase volume. The one on the right looks like it's a separate piece. I don't know if that could be handled differently with some landscaping or something. or some other articulation, but just wanted to point that out because you did make an effort to move the parking behind and it sort of gives the impression that that's what that space is intended for. Okay, with that, I'll open public comments. If you'd like to speak on this item, please come to either podium. And if you're participating by Zoom, please press, use the raise hand option or star nine if you are on phone. We have a big house today. Nobody wants to come talk? Okay. Brenda, do we have anybody on Zoom or phone?

No, Mr. Chair.

Okay. I'll close public comments. Commissioners, do we have any further questions? Yes, Vice Chair Zick.

Not a question. I'm ready for a motion.

Okay. Let me close the item, and you can make your motion.

I WOULD LIKE THE PLANNING COMMISSION TO FIND THAT THE PROJECT IS CATEGORICALLY EXEMPT FROM THE PROVISIONS OF THE CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT CEQA GUIDELINES SECTION 15315 CLASS 15 MINOR LAND DIVISION AND 15332 CLASS 32 INFIELD DEVELOPMENT AND APPROVE THE TENTATIVE PARCEL MAP 2026-129 and the development review subject to conditions of approval.

All right. So we have a motion by Vice Chair Zick, second by Commissioner Dixon. Would you like to speak to your motion?

Sure. It's a beautiful project. It's well designed. It's thoughtful. And it's for sale ownership, which is what the city desperately needs. Thank you.

Commissioner Dixon?

Just very briefly to echo Vice Chair Zick's comments, but also for folks who have been around and are familiar with Mesa, there's been sort of an evolution of the housing as people, as sort of some of the older ones are replaced and newer ones are put in. And what I particularly liked about this particular development was that the parking is in the back, it's off the street, but it's also not just a kind of just a long strip of a driveway with zero landscaping whatsoever and that you know this does promote and to Commissioner Andrade's comments this does promote a bit of an open common space an area that if you know everybody gets along they can have events and things in there but I thought it was a very thoughtfully designed project, and I welcome it, and I hope it's wildly successful. Chair, that does kind of look like a golf cart garage. So I hear what you're saying. But anyway, thank you very much for bringing this to us, and I hope it's very successful. Thank you.

All right, motion and second. Can we call for the question? Mr. Chair. Oh, sorry, Commissioner Martinez.

Will the maker of a motion take a friendly amendment to amend references to development services to community development where it appears, including but not limited to conditions of approval 6, 8, and 11? sure thank you and just my comment on this like yes it is it is more housing and i am always for more housing so i will be speaking i will be voting in support of this but also just like like i i'll show this mainly for online i don't know if the people at home can see this but like and the audience can see this but like the the gray area in this floor plan is dedicated solely for the usage of motor vehicles. And in the area that you have eight parking spaces, you could house another family, like another family could live here, but instead we are dedicating that just for the purpose of motor vehicles. Or it could be used for a bigger yard if you just move the garage up a bit and you don't have the two open space parking units in the front for the two front units. um so it's it's disappointing that this is what we have to do to meet the minimums um we could have more open space we could have more uh people who can be housed but um it is the developer's choice that is how they designed it and it is more housing so i will support the motion thank you all right now let's call for the question motion carries seven zero

Okay, Mr. Martinez, that decision is final unless appealed to the city council within seven days.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Ms. Green, would you mind reading the title for public hearing item number two?

Thank you. This is development review PDVR-25-0013 tentative track map number 19458 and density bonus for a 15-unit residential common interest development at 2075 Harbor Boulevard. And presentation by Mr. Mendez, senior planner.

Okay. Before we get to you, Mr. Mendez, any ex parte communications to report? Vice Chair Zick?

I met with the applicant back in March of this year.

Okay. Anyone else? Commissioner Andrade?

Likewise. Yep.

Okay. Anyone else? Commissioner Martinez?

I met the applicant, I believe, a couple months ago.

All right. And I'll report I did as well. And Commissioner Klipak? Okay. All right. Mr. Mendez, the floor is yours.

GOOD EVENING, CHAIR AND COMMISSIONERS. THE ITEM BEFORE YOU TONIGHT IS A REQUEST FOR APPROVAL OF A PROPOSED 15 UNIT RESIDENTIAL COMMON INTEREST DEVELOPMENT LOCATED AT 2075 HARBOR BOULEVARD. THE SITE IS CURRENTLY DEVELOPED WITH A VACANT COMMERCIAL BUILDING. IT WAS RECENTLY OCCUPIED BY AN AUTO RETAIL BATTERY STORE WHICH HAS SINCE MOVED. The property is located between Charlie Street and Harper Boulevard, approximately 300 feet south of Hamilton Street. The site is zoned C2 General Business with a General Commercial General Plan designation and is surrounded by residential and commercial uses. The project is also located within the Measure K corridor and is identified as a housing element opportunity site. Under the city's housing element, the site is subject to the mixed-use overlay district zoning, which allows residential development on designated opportunity sites and establishes the project's development standards. Where there's a conflict, the mixed-use development standards take precedence over any other applicable zoning provisions. The proposal includes three separate entitlements. Since it is a housing element site, a development review is required for the construction of new multi-story buildings. A tentative track map is also required for condominium purposes. And lastly, the project requires a density bonus application as it qualifies for density bonus and concession and waivers. So the development review is required for all new development within the mood. It establishes the overall development plan for the proposed project. It includes three stories, 15 unit residential development with waivers to above ground utilities, front setback, common lot landscape setback, common use open space, driveway width, storage, distance between buildings and landscape parkways. The density proposed is 23.8 dwelling units per acre, and the moot allows a density between 20 and 50 units per acre. All buildings are designed in a modern coastal style and is proposed at a maximum height of 38 feet, six inches. Vehicle access to the site would be provided by a 20 foot wide drive aisle from Charles Street and a secondary exit only access point to Harbor Boulevard. The private drive available will provide direct garage access to each unit and pedestrian access will also be available from Charlie Street. The project consists of six duplexes and one triplex for a total of 15 homes. Of those, 13 would be market rate units and two would be moderate income affordable units. Each home would have its own private backyard and the buildings would be separated by pedestrian walkways. THE UNITS ARE ORIENTED TOWARD THE LONG DRIVE AISLE WITH WINDOWS FACING THE LANDSCAPE AREA ALONG THE SOUTHERN PROPERTY The project incorporates the modern coastal architecture style. It includes large bay area windows with a mix of exterior materials, creating a vertical and horizontal articulation. There's varied gable roof forms, reducing the building mass, and the design is compatible with the adjacent residential development to the north. THE DEVELOPMENT INCLUDES THREE FLOOR PLAN TYPES, ONE FOR THE MARKET RATE DUPLEX UNITS, ONE FOR THE DUPLEX BUILDING THAT INCLUDES AN AFFORDABLE UNIT, AND ONE FOR THE TRIPLEX BUILDING THAT INCLUDES THE SECOND AFFORDABLE UNIT. EACH UNIT FEATURES A GROUND FLOOR, ONE OR TWO CAR GARAGE WITH A PRIVATE REAR YARD. AND ALSO THIS FLY SHOW IS THE FLOOR PLAN FOR THE DUPLEX CONTINUING ONE OF THE AFFORDABLE UNITS. This floor plan represents the market rate duplex units, which are just over 2,200 square feet. They provide the largest living area within the development. And this floor plan represents the triplex units and it includes one of the affordable units. So although no minimum parking is required for the project under either the mixed use overlay district or AB 2097, the project also qualifies for reduced parking standards under state density bonus law. Under those standards, the project would be required to provide a minimum of 23 parking spaces. However, the applicant is proposing a total of 41 parking spaces, including 28 garage spaces. and 13 partially covered spaces, and a bike rack to accommodate two bikes. The project proposes a variety of drought-tolerant plant species throughout the project, including within the front setback, along the driveways and sidewalks, between the garage doors, and within the open space areas. And the project requires a tentative track map. This is for condominium purposes, which would require common lot. And now we come to the density bonus section because the project proposes 15 dwelling units on 0.63 acre site. This exceeds the housing elements minimum required of 20 units per acre because the state density bonus law actually calculates density With the minimum required, the project's base density is 13 units. With two moderate income for sale units, the project qualifies for one incentive or concession under state density bonus law. So although the project qualifies for a density bonus, the applicant is not requesting additional bonus units because the mood already allows a significantly more units than proposed. The applicant is requesting one concession to allow the existing overhead utility lines on Charlie Street to remain above ground as undergrounding would be a significant increased project cost. The applicant is also requesting eight waivers from development standards, including setbacks, open space, driveway width, landscaping, storage, and building separation. Under state density bonus laws, these waivers must be granted if the standards would physically preclude the project from being built at its permitted density, unless the city finds they would create a public health or safety risk or environmental impact or damage to historic resources. THE PROJECT ALSO IS A HOUSING OPPORTUNITY SITE WHICH WAS IDENTIFIED IN THE REGIONAL HOUSING NEEDS ALLOCATION. THE HOUSING ELEMENT ASSUMED THE SITE WOULD ACCOMMODATE 30 UNITS ACROSS MULTIPLE INCOME LEVELS BUT THE PROPOSED PROJECT ONLY INCLUDES 15 UNITS WITH FEWER AFFORDABLE UNITS THAN ORIGINALLY ANTICIPATED. UNDER STATE'S NO NET LOSS LAW THE CITY MUST ENSURE THERE IS ENOUGH CAPACITY TO MEET ITS HOUSING OBLIGATIONS. WHEN THE SITE DEVELOPS FEWER UNITS THAN PLANNED, STAFF EVALUATED THE PROJECT AND FOUND THE ADDITIONAL HOUSING CAPACITY WILL NEED TO BE IDENTIFIED TO ADDRESS THE SHORTFALL. THE CITY IS CURRENTLY UPDATING ITS HOUSING ELEMENT AND EXPECTS TO IDENTIFY REPLACEMENT SITES THIS SEPTEMBER TO RESTORE CAPACITY AND REMAIN IN COMPLIANCE WITH STATE LAW. PURSUANT TO CODE, THREE NOTIFICATIONS WERE COMPLETED FOR THIS ITEM. THERE WAS A MAILED NOTICE ON-SITE POSTING. AND A NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION AND STAFF DID RECEIVE TWO PUBLIC COMMENTS THE DAY OF THIS MEETING. THE PROJECT QUALIFIES FOR STATUTORY SWEKA EXEMPTION ESTABLISHED UNDER AB 130. for eligible infill housing developments. While this project is exempt from CEQA, the statute still requires completion of tribal consultation. The city did consult with the associated tribes and resulting conditions of approval were required for monitoring, discovery protocols, and cultural resource training during construction. A phase one and phase two environmental assessments were also completed. resulting in a soil management plan and additional conditions to address potential soil contamination and methane monitoring. Because the project satisfies all eligibility requirements and incorporates these measures, staff has determined that this is statutory exempt from CEQA and no further environmental document is required. The Planning Commission may take the following actions. They could approve the project, approve the project modifications, or deny the project. Staff recommends that the Planning Commission find that the project is exempt from the provisions of CEQA, approve the development review for the development, approve the map for the condominium purposes, and approve the density bonus request for an associated concession and waivers for the development. This concludes staff presentation, the applicant AND THE APPLICANT'S TEAM INCLUDING THEIR ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR ANY QUESTIONS.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH MR. MENDEZ. QUESTIONS OF STAFF?

THANK YOU. MR. MENDEZ I'M LOOKING AT ATTACHMENT 2 WHICH IS THE LETTER FROM THE APPLICANT AND IT'S DATED JULY 17TH OF THIS YEAR. WAS THERE NOT A LETTER THAT ACCOMPANIED THEIR PLANNING APPLICATION?

THERE WAS A LETTER THAT ACCOMPANIED ITS ORIGINAL SUBMITTAL.

WHAT WAS THE DATE OF THAT?

NOVEMBER 6, 2025.

ALL RIGHT. AND DID YOU HAPPEN TO SEE THE PUBLIC COMMENT LETTER THAT CAME IN TODAY FROM A TIM LEWIS REGARDING WHAT HE REFERRED TO AS ORPHANED PARCELS? DID YOU SEE THAT?

I did see it.

Correct. Okay. I didn't see anywhere in the conditions of approval any requirement that homeowners would have to sign a disclosure acknowledging the adjacency of commercial uses. Is there a reason why we don't have that as a condition of approval?

I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question?

IS THERE A REASON WHY WE DO NOT HAVE A CONDITION OF APPROVAL WHICH WOULD REQUIRE HOMEOWNERS OF THIS DEVELOPMENT TO SIGN A DISCLOSURE ACKNOWLEDGING THE ADJACENCY OF THEIR PROPERTY TO COMMERCIAL USES?

THERE'S NO PROVISION IN THE ZONING CODE THAT WOULD REQUIRE THAT.

I RECOGNIZE THAT. OKAY. THANK YOU.

Right. Commissioner Dixon.

If I can get through this without coughing. For context, the adjacent development to the north, when i was on the planning commission previously we approved that and mr lewis made us made it extraordinarily clear that he was very unhappy with that that it might impact his business which i understood and agreed with and at the time we were operating under an overly i believe uh schema scheme where where there was a requirement for a buyer's notice and I was just reviewing these again to find out if there was that buyer's notice provision in there, because next door there's a collision repair business. And since Harbor Boulevard still has commercial and repair business and things like that, it would be beneficial, I believe, to have as a condition of approval some sort of buyer's notice in the future. I'm not sure if that's something that was just inadvertently left out of the mood or because we're replacing these overlay districts with a mood. And that used to be a requirement because we beefed up that language and in fact developed a new buyer's notice that was much more prominent in response to Mr. Lewis's concerns and this development because I believe it was the first one that was going in next door to an active commercial rental operation that was very noisy starting very early in the morning. So that's what that context is and I understand you're saying it's not a requirement now but I just wanted to provide that that background so you can see where we're coming from that's not something if it's not included if it's not a requirement that's something the Commission will have to deal with but that's what that's what I was coming from.

Yeah just to provide extra context a lot of Harvard Boulevard is also under the Measure K corridor. And there's also areas within a Harbor Boulevard that have also been identified as housing element sites. But if it's the desire of the Commission to include that as a condition of approval, then you'll have those discussions.

Because as Mr. Lewis pointed out, the last thing he wanted to hear on day one of new occupants being there is why is this business next door making noise at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning? Well, that's what they've been doing for 50 years, for instance. So I think, yeah. I think you're right. With Measure K and the housing element and all those different factors that have happened since then, it's going to be something I think we may have to address in a project-by-project instead of a good thing. Thank you.

Commissioner Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to ask about no net loss finding and what the legal requirement is. So this might be city attorney. So the finding is that if the city, I'm reading staff report, this might not be exact finding language, but if the city approves the development of a parcel identified in its housing element sites inventory with fewer units than shown in the housing element, it must either make findings that the housing elements remaining sites have sufficient capacity to accommodate the remaining unmet RHNA by each income level, right now are housing element is below arena, so we cannot make that finding, which leaves the second one, or identify and make available sufficient sites to accommodate the remaining unmet arena for each income category. So I know we're working on updating our housing element right now, but what is the legal timeframe of this finding to identify and make available sufficient sites?

I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER THAT UNLESS THE OKAY. SO SIMILAR TO THE MARCH 17TH CITY COUNCIL ACTION TO REMOVE SITES, THAT FINDING THEN TRIGGERS THE 180 DAY PERIOD TO IDENTIFY NEW SITES. WE'RE ALREADY IN THAT PERIOD. WE'RE ALREADY IDENTIFYING SITES AND CAPACITY. SO THAT IS THE FINDING THAT WE'RE MAKING AS PART OF THE STAFF REPORT. If we weren't in that process, it would trigger a new 180 day, but we don't need to do that because we're already.

Cause we're in the, we're already in that one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Uh, and then, so, uh, this project proposes affordable units and that's what gets the density bonus. So are the affordable units legally required to be similar to the market rate units? NO. NOT NECESSARILY. THEY DON'T. I THOUGHT WITH SOME OF OUR OTHER SITES WE REQUIRED THAT THEY BE SIMILAR AND LIKE INTERSPERSE THROUGHOUT THE PROPERTY AND NOT JUST ALL IN ONE SPACE BUT FOR THIS WE'RE SAYING YOU DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO.

IT'S NOT REQUIRED UNDER STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW. OUR INCLUSIONARY ORDINANCE DOES REQUIRE THAT BUT THIS PROJECT IS NOT SUBJECT TO OUR INCLUSIONARY ORDINANCE. FDC, FOR EXAMPLE, WHICH YOU'LL HEAR LATER TONIGHT, DOES ALSO HAVE THAT REQUIREMENT. SO THERE ARE INSTANCES FOR CERTAIN PROJECTS WHERE THAT IS A REQUIREMENT, BUT IT'S NOT APPLICABLE TO THIS PROJECT BECAUSE IT'S ONLY SUBJECT TO STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW.

OKAY. THANK YOU. THOSE ARE MY QUESTIONS.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OF THE STAFF? OKAY. I WILL OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING NOW AND ASK THE APPLICANT OR APPLICANT'S REPRESENTATIVE IF YOU'D LIKE TO COME TO THE PODIUM.

THE APPLICANT ALSO HAS A SHORT PRESENTATION.

OKAY. SO MR. CUNNINGHAM, YOU CAN STATE YOUR NAME FOR THE RECORD AND THEN AS I HAD ASKED THE PRIOR APPLICANT, HAVE YOU READ THE CONDITIONS OF APPROVAL AND DO YOU AGREE TO THOSE?

YES. GOOD EVENING, PLANNING COMMISSION. MY NAME IS BRIAN CUNNINGHAM AND WE'RE IN FULL AGREEMENT TO THE CONDITIONS OF APPROVAL AND LOOK FORWARD TO IMPLEMENTING THAT IN A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY.

OKAY.

I'M JUST GOING TO HAND THIS TO VICTOR. Joining me to help answer any questions this evening is our design team and Olsen's executive vice president of community development, John Rexton. I want to start by thanking city staff for their diligence and hard work preparing this proposed community for tonight's meeting. The Olsen Company, for more than 35 years, has experienced developing thoughtful, designed infill communities throughout Southern California. The proposed design will be Olsen's fifth community within the city of Costa Mesa, the most recently being West Side Walk, located at Newport Boulevard and Ford Road, and 28 Walk, located immediately north of this property. Our commitment to thoughtful design, quality construction, exceptional home ownership service has earned national recognition In 2026, Olson has received the Alliant Award for overall home purchase and ownership experience for the 11th time, an unmatched achievement in the home building industry. Alliant is an independent customer satisfaction research firm, similar to JD Powers. It conducts surveys throughout the home buying and ownership experience, and we strive to bring a high level of excellence to every community we build. And in fact, this drives the entire company's focus from the beginning to the end. Our long-term commitment to homeowners extends beyond the close of escrow. Olsen's Champion Program is a unique initiative that provides a dedicated representative to regularly attend HOA meetings for a minimum of 10 years. This program supports residents, addresses community concerns, and helps ensure each neighbourhood continues to thrive long after construction is complete. For the past 14 months, Olsen's worked closely with city staff to thoughtfully design and entitle this project. In October of 2025, the community vested its rights under California Senate Bill 330. In June of 2026, the community determined that this, the city determined that this application is complete, allowing the project to be presented at this commission tonight. Our design is consistent with the general plan, the mixed use overlay zoning, and has been identified as a housing opportunity site in the city's six cycle housing element. By providing both income-qualified affordable homes and market-rate residences, the project advances the city's goal of expanding housing opportunities while delivering high-quality neighborhood that complements the surrounding area. California has enacted several key housing laws to facilitate housing production, and this project qualifies under four of those. California State Density Bonus Law allows for additional housing, incentives, waivers for development standards, and reduced parking requirements in exchange for providing affordable housing. as proposed with this project. The Housing Crisis Act clarifies densities, expedites entitlements, limits hearings and best development rights. The Housing Accountability Act requires the approval of housing projects that meet local standards and provides for financial penalties for unlawful denials. Lastly, the Housing CEQA Reform Bill provides CEQA exemption for those qualified housing proposals. In January of 2025, Olson hosted a community meeting at the Costa Mesa Library. The purpose of this meeting was, or 2026, the purpose of this meeting was to introduce the proposed project, gather community feedback, address concerns, answer questions, and about 10 to 15 residents showed up. concerns raised by residents related to construction noise dust and debris we recognize these as important considerations and will fully comply with the city's approved construction hours as well as applicable local and state noise and control requirements The site was historically occupied as the ready rental equipment facility, and most recently Battery Mart, an auto storage business on the southern half of the property, and both tenants have since vacated the property. Battery Mart has relocated to the intersection of Victoria Street and Harbour Boulevard. The project will transform a vacant, underutilized site into a thoughtfully designed residential community that will revitalize Harbor Boulevard, advance the city and state's housing goals, and provide lasting benefits for current and future Costa Mesa residents. The project consists of 15 for sale homes including two affordable homes reserved for moderate income households. The community composed of seven buildings including six duplexes and one triplex adjacent to Charlie Street. Vehicular access is provided off of Charlie Street and through a gated entry and exit as well as an exit only onto Harbor Boulevard. The community has been thoughtfully designed with features that include a variety of residential amenities and features including tree line frontage, a secure pedestrian entry for units one and two, private backyards, two enclosed parking spaces that are staggered. By staggering these, you're able to provide one car space for a driveway apron, private gates to the backyards, a six-foot privacy wall along the northern boundary, a tree-lined frontage on Harbor Boulevard, a commercial driveway on Harbor Boulevard, an exit-only gate onto Harbor Boulevard, a six-foot privacy wall on the southern boundary, landscaping with trees along the southern boundary, driveway mow strips along the drive aisles, landscape front entry paths to the front doors, a community mailbox and bike parking, and a gate for the entry and exit off of Charlie Street. We'll also have a pedestrian gate access off of Charlie, and decorative pavers at the community's entrance. Lastly, the community is enhanced with 37 trees that will create a well-landscaped, pedestrian-friendly environment. The project also includes 42 on-site parking spaces to serve 15 homes, or a total of 45 bedrooms, ensuring ample parking for residents and visitors. The homes will feature a modern coastal architectural style with light stucco and two distinct elevation colors. This provides visual variety and distinguish each building. The community will also complement the adjacent 28 walk neighborhood to the north while blending timeless architecture with modern, all electric, energy efficient living. Design features include decorative entry doors, vertical board and batten sidings, decorative simulated wood corbels, and bay windows. In summary, this proposed community will transform an underutilized property into a vibrant community that provides lasting benefits to the City of Costa Mesa. The project is consistent with the general plan, the project is consistent with the housing element, and the project is consistent with the mixed-use overlay district, while also advancing the City's regional housing needs assessment goals by providing both affordable and market-rate ownership housing. Its location will support nearby businesses while generating developer impact fees, school fees, and sales tax revenues, and additional economic activity for the city. Thank you for your time and consideration. We appreciate the opportunity to present this in front of you tonight, and we welcome any questions you have.

Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. Commissioners, any questions of staff? Commissioner Andrade? Go ahead. No, for the applicant, sorry.

Okay. Thank you so much for that wonderful presentation. Thanks for all the detail. He took his own history there. So first off, I appreciate the opportunity of providing affordable housing for first-time homebuyers in our community. I think a perfect example is the applicant that we saw before you, right? Those opportunities weren't vested into that development, but here you are providing those. So highly appreciate that creating opportunity to allow it, creating a path for renters to become homeowners first off. Secondly, so any individual that is considering buying one of these properties, will they have an opportunity to tour the site, make sure that they're familiar with the neighborhood and kind of understand what what are they're committing into right i imagine they are right since you heard we don't have a form that they're going to be able to sign off no that is correct yes so they'll know that they're going to be right next to um it collisions Thank you. And secondly, I appreciate all the trees lining the streets. Really appreciate that. That's a big win. Again, we are looking at our climate adaptation plan and that is peppered all across that document. So I appreciate being ahead of the game before that's even approved. And also the number of trees laid out across the property. Just out of curiosity, maybe you can expand on why only exit into Harbor. Why not all, you know, why not make it a two way? Is it just too narrow or maybe if you can expand on that?

Yeah. Harbor Boulevard is, it's really for safety. Um, it's a, you know, pretty quickly, you know, traveled, um, corridor heading south. We didn't want to have too much traffic coming in and then homes actually leaving there's drive aisles just adjacent to the entry as well. So we wanted to make sure that first security is, is important for, um, our homeowners.

Okay. I mean, you could be setting a trend for cars to slow down on Harbor Boulevard if it was allowing both ways, which would be great. I mean, many community members are always expressing their needs and concerns about slowing down. But I know that's a bigger issue aside from this development here. Other than that, that's really it. Thank you.

Yeah, and I just want to mention we also expect additional trees to be planted in the backyards as well. So this is just the ones that are in the common open space at this time. So thank you for your comments.

Fantastic.

Okay.

Any other questions of the applicant?

All right. I'll give you a chance, Mr. Cunningham, after public comment if you want to respond to anything as well. Great. Thank you. I WILL NOW OPEN PUBLIC COMMENTS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK, PLEASE COME TO EITHER PODIUM AND IF YOU'RE PARTICIPATING BY ZOOM, YOU CAN USE THE RAISE HAND OPTION AND IF YOU'RE PARTICIPATING BY PHONE, PLEASE PRESS STAR 9. GIVE ME ONE SECOND BEFORE YOU START.

OKAY. GO AHEAD. just down the street. I thought the presentation was great and I thought the entrance only on Harbor Boulevard was actually fantastic, fantastic idea. Because it is a very quickly traveled road and we would like to think that there's a large backdrop of cars that will come to slow down, but the truth is it is a very quickly traveled road. So I thought that the entrance the exit only on Harbor would make the new community blend seamlessly into the community, which makes it just comfortable for all the existing residents. That's it, thanks. All right, thank you.

All right, go ahead.

Hi, as a resident of Costa Mesa, I appreciate the affordable housing that is being built here at a space that isn't used to its maximum. Right now. Now, I understand that with this type of housing, they're being given exemptions to certain standards, which leads me to ask the question, these are all electric homes, high in density. Can they put solar panels on these so that it can be more affordable for the residents? While you're building it, why not put the solar panels in? Thank you.

Thank you. All right, anybody else in chambers wish to speak? Ms. Green, do we have anybody on Zoom or phone?

Cathy, please. Yes, hi, this is Kathy Esfahani with the Costa Mesa Affordable Housing Coalition. I, too, am glad that there is affordable housing included in this project. One thing I didn't hear addressed was the term for affordability, whether there's a covenant of 35 years, 50 years. So hopefully it is a lengthy term that will keep these units at, moderate for moderate income. Of course, the great need in our community is for lower income rental housing, but we'll take what we can get. So I hope you address the length of the the affordability covenant. Thank you.

Thank you.

No further speakers, Mr. Chair.

OK. I will close public comments. Commissioners, any further questions of the applicant or staff? Commissioner Andrade, go ahead. Yes.

I also want to take into account Mr. Lewis's comments about Charlie Street. One of his comments are that, right, we're going to have cars speeding or coming into this property. to create maybe and maybe this is more of a public works opportunity for, you know, dot the street down the middle. So it's very clear because I know also there's a lot of rental properties around that area. So everyone's trying to maximize sidewalk parking there. So just to, again, help accommodate all the additional movement that will be taking place there. Don't know you.

So. We should write it. I mean, that's something that public works can can look into, especially when it gets into the design phase into the project phase. Those that that that could be taken into account.

OK, great, thank you.

Commissioners, any other questions? See a lot of paper shuffling over here.

Commissioner Dixon.

WE'RE JUST CONFIRMING THE TERM OF THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BECAUSE THERE'S A MANAGEMENT PLAN IN HERE THAT SAYS 45 YEARS AND DIRECTOR TAY IS CHECKING TO MAKE SURE THAT'S CONSISTENT. OKAY.

THERE IS A CONDITION OF APPROVAL FOR THE COVENANT. IT'S AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING AGREEMENT. THAT WOULD BE CONDITION 45. Right, so condition 46 details that it's actually gonna be 55 years. The management plan was a draft, but the affordable housing agreement will refine that.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Any other questions? No? Okay. I'm gonna close the item. May I have a motion? Motion by Commissioner Dixon.

So I would like to recommend that we find that the project is exempt, that the Planning Commission find that the project is exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to Public Resources Code Section 21080.66 and adopt a resolution to take the following actions. Approve the development review for the development of the project including 15 dwelling units with a maximum height of three stories, 38 feet 6 inches. approve the tentative track map to subdivide the property into residential common interest development and approve the density bonus request which will provide two moderate income units.

All right and second by Commissioner Andrade would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes this is a it's an interesting site and I think that it's been a while it's been in progress for a while I think that It's very well designed. It's going to complement 228, I think that's what you call it, 28 above that, which we approved back and it was very contentious. And it's turned out to be quite successful. And I really appreciate you bringing that to Costa Mesa. So I think with that precedent in mind and with the designs of these and the affordable provisions, and a lot of the thoughtful things that went in to try to make this fit on this lot, there's a lot of exemptions, but I think that in the overall scheme of things, it works. You have adequate parking because there really is no other parking except for Charles Street, and that you're gonna have the parking on site. There are some bike parking areas and some common areas, as well as usable backyards. When I initially looked at this, I thought that the backyards were kind of small, but it's about 18 feet. from the wall to the wall, and then you have the additional from B-Sign. So it's a very well-designed project, and I think it's going to help us with everything we need here in Costa Mesa, and it's a perfect project for Harbor Boulevard. So thank you for bringing it to us. I appreciate it very much, and I hope it's very successful.

All right. Commissioner Andrade?

Yeah, same. I would echo it. Thank you so much for choosing Costa Mesa for now your third project. IN OUR CITY AND AGAIN JUST HUGE APPRECIATION FOR INCORPORATING AFFORDABLE FIRST TIME HOME BUYER OPPORTUNITIES. CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH HOW BIG THAT IS IN OUR CITY ESPECIALLY IN MY DISTRICT WHICH IS RIGHT HERE WHERE THE PROJECT WILL BE. I MEAN WE'RE GOING TO SEE LATER IN THE MEETING WHICH YOU'LL GET TO SKIP. THIS IS A REASON WHY WE NEED TO PRIORITIZE Affordable housing every other opportunity the city can because not many developers will come forward with this opportunity. So huge appreciation for that.

Thank you Any other comments commissioners vice-chair sick Thank you This project as presented tonight very much matches the discussions we had back in March. And so I'm pleased to see that very challenging site to work with and the driveway and the aesthetics are probably less than ideal but given the constraints you had i think it's a great design if there's additional residential opportunity to build further south that'd be great i know that's what you would have loved to have done with this project but that owner wasn't willing to or unable to come to an arrangement with you for that. I think the exit only onto harbor is a great idea given the difficulty traveling on harbor and it's only going to get more difficult. The only comment I'd make, the proximity of that gate off of Harbor, it just looked on the plans like it would be potential that somebody would pull in there thinking they could encounter the gate. Now they're stuck because they can't back out, and it would be a challenge. If there was even some signage that made it clear you can't turn right, I just recognize on the plan that potential challenge. Great project. I'll be supporting the motion.

All right, I too will be supporting the motion. I don't want to echo every comment that's been made. I think it's actually been very, very astute observations about the value of this project. From my perspective, though, this realizes the promise of Measure K in that we're providing housing on the corridor and we're seeing that evolution happen here. This is an incredibly challenging site, and I think you've done a very good job of designing it in a way that provides what we want for housing, especially on a corridor, and addresses some of the circulation concerns. What I'm actually really impressed with though is, and this is from the planning entitlement perspective, is just exercising some restraint using density bonus. could have certainly added a lot more units here. But you know your customers, you've worked in our city, you understand the community, and I appreciate that restraint. And it also shows in that you've provided more parking than you would need to have here. So it checks a number of boxes for me, and I think it's a high-quality project, and we're, I think, happy to have you again here in Costa Mesa. Is there no more comments? Oh, Commissioner, sorry, Director Tai.

Chair, thank you. Earlier in this discussion, the Commission had a conversation about possibly including disclosures for adjacent commercial uses, and I wanted to make sure if there was any interest in that, that would be the time. Thank you.

Commissioner Dixon.

As maker of the motion and the person who provided some additional context after it was brought up, I think that this is different from that prior project. I think that Mr. Lewis's equipment rental business was a noisier, more active, more externally noisy than necessarily an enclosed collision repair center. So as Commissioner Andrade pointed out, if you're going to be buying something there, you look next door and there's a collision repair center. there's your buyer's notice and I think that it's not something that necessarily needs to be in perpetuity, excuse me, in the CC&Rs. Again, it's just a different situation from the prior project as far as the nature of the adjacent commercial. So that's why I don't think, I didn't include that in my motion. And so if no other commissioners feel it's necessary, I'm okay with leaving that out.

Yeah, one just last comment in regards to circulation. I think here, I mean, great project and all. I know that we're having to limit, having to make concessions of only one way in, one way out into potential people's homes. We could put more crosswalks along Harbor Boulevard. That would slow it down. We could put some stop signs in the corners to allow people to cross the street. That would slow it down. You're going to have a Starbucks right across the street. How are they going to get there? More lights along Harbor Boulevard. That would slow it down. So again, that doesn't have to be the end all and be all, limiting accessibility solely because of the speed of our streets. So anyways, just concession to that. And finally, on a lighter note, again, hugely appreciate the opportunity OF GREEN SPACE AND BACKYARD SPACE ALL THE WAY FROM THE WINDOW TO THE WALL. APPRECIATE IT. KUDOS.

ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. LET'S CALL FOR THE QUESTION.

MOTION CARRIES 7-0.

THAT DECISION IS FINAL UNLESS APPEALED TO THE COUNCIL WITHIN SEVEN DAYS. All right, we have no old business tonight. So our first new business item, Ms. Green, can you read the title?

Thank you, this is the Climate Action Adaptation Plan, Safety Element Update and Environmental Justice Policy Update. Presentation by Ms. Gregg, Contract Project Manager, and Ms. McGill, Planning Manager.

All right, Ms. Gregg, who's wearing green ceremoniously.

Thank you for noticing, yes.

I'm going to start us off today, Anna McGill, Advanced Planning and Housing Manager. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Planning Commission. I'm just going to do some quick introductions because we've got a big team here for the study session tonight. So sitting next to me is Amber Gregg. She's a contract planner with Community Catalyst. She's been the project manager for the CAP effort, and we're going to tag team the presentation tonight. I'm going to turn it over to her after the introductions. A little bit further down on the end next to Sung is Charles Springer. He is new with the city as of May. He is our energy and sustainability services manager, and he's been assisting with the CAP effort since joining, and he'll be key in the implementation efforts of the CAP project. IF AND WHEN IT GETS APPROVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL. SO WE'RE SUPER EXCITED TO HAVE HIM HERE. HE'S BEEN HELPING US GET ACROSS THE FINISH LINE AND HOPEFULLY MAKE SURE THAT THIS DOCUMENT DOESN'T SIT ON THE SHELF AND GETS APPROPRIATELY IMPLEMENTED. NEXT TO ME IS JENNIFER REED. SHE'S THE CONSULTANT FROM THE DUDEC TEAM WHO'S BEEN MANAGING THE CAP PROCESS AS WELL. AND THEN RIGHT NEXT TO BRENDA ON HER LEFT IS KURT NAGLE. He's from the InterWest consultant team and has been assisting with the environmental justice update. So a lot of different policy efforts in one item for you tonight. That's the team. We're all available here to answer questions. I and Amber are going to go through the presentation tonight. So with that, I'll go ahead and hand it over to her.

All right. Good evening, planning commissioners. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. So we're going to go over three major planning documents tonight. The first is a climate action adaptation plan. The second is a safety element update. And then finally, the environmental justice policy update. So a little bit of a background on why are we here for this study session tonight? What's its purpose? Well, first and foremost, we want to make sure we give you a background on what local state law requires as well as other ongoing planning efforts. And we'll be talking about how all of those impact the climate action adaptation plans, safety element update, and environmental justice policies. Overview of all three documents include key components as well as outcomes of them. We'll go over our public participation and community input, which was a large lift and extensive effort. And then we also want to receive your feedback on the documents. And then our goal is to return back to Planning Commission on August 10th. So a little bit of the background, there have been numerous California state laws that have been passed in recent years requiring local agencies to address climate change, community resilience, public safety, as well as environmental justice. The projects also implement housing element programs adopted as part of our sixth cycle housing element that we're currently implementing. specifically Housing Element Program 2G, which commits the city to update its safety element and incorporating environmental justice policies into the general plan by the end of this year. So in response to the state's requirements, the city advanced three closely related initiatives. Again, the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, Safety Element and EJ Policy Update. Each project has its own purpose, but each of them also rely on the same technical information, community outreach and policy framework. SO BY PREPARING THE THREE DOCUMENTS CONCURRENTLY, THIS ALLOWS THE CITY TO DEVELOP A COORDINATED AND CONSISTENT SET OF POLICIES BUT ALSO HELPS US SAVE ON OUR RESOURCES AS WELL AND FUNDING THAT GOES ALONG WITH IT. So the first question is, what exactly are these documents? I mean, it's a lot of big terms there. So first and foremost, they're policy documents. They are not regulatory documents, which mean that they don't pass laws. The Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, and that and is a very important and. Some people may be familiar with the Climate Action Plan and wondering what an adaptation plan is. BUT WHAT THAT CONSISTS OF IS A LONG RANGE STRATEGY TO REDUCE OUR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS WHILE PREPARING OUR CITY FOR THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. SO A CLIMATE ACTION PLAN SIMPLY HAS MITIGATION FOR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS WHERE A CLIMATE ACTION AND ADAPTATION PLAN ALSO HAS ADAPTATION MEASURES FOR CLIMATE HAZARDS. A safety element is one of seven required elements of our general plan and its purpose is to address natural hazards as well as emergency preparedness and climate resilience using the city's latest hazard information. And then finally, environmental justice policies are policies identified within our general plan intended to ensure that all residents have fair access to healthy, safe and livable community regardless of income or neighborhood. So what's the purpose of looking at all of these together? So we're going to have a lot of consistent terminology heard when we're talking about each of these documents, but it's good to understand what the purpose, requirement, and outcome are for each of these documents also. So for the climate action and adaptation plan, or I'll refer to it as a CAP a lot of times, that purpose is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions while preparing for climate impacts. And for the state requirement, it's not actually a requirement of the state. However, it strongly supports state climate goals and it helps the city align our efforts with those goals and implement them as well. The primary outcome is climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as significantly improved grant eligibility. For the safety element update, that purpose is to protect the community from natural and environmental hazards, and that is required by state law in several places of the government code. And the primary outcome is to update our general plan safety policies to be consistent with our local hazard mitigation plan, which we will learn a little bit more about that plan also as part of this presentation. And then finally, our environmental justice policy update is to promote healthy, equitable, and resilient communities. This is also required by state law. And the primary outcome is to identify the existing environmental justice policies that are already within our general plan, as well as new policies that help implement state law requirements. So first for the climate action and adaptation plan, that was kicked off by the city council on October 14th, 2024, with the approval of the due debt contract. And then the council directed the cap to focus on municipal leadership, WITH COMMUNITY EDUCATIONS INCENTIVES AND PARTNERSHIPS RATHER THAN BROAD NEW REGULATORY MANDATES. SO THAT'S HOW THIS CAP WAS DRAFTED TO IMPLEMENT THEIR GUIDANCE. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION WAS KEY AND IN ADDITION TO THOSE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION REDUCTIONS AND ADAPTATION, IT ALSO HAS ADDITIONAL BENEFITS WHICH INCLUDE FUNDING AND GRANT OPPORTUNITY AS WELL AS COST SAVINGS FROM IMPLEMENTING some of these programs and it also provides a roadmap to ensure efficient use of city resources while maximizing our overall impact when we're trying to decide which projects should we undertake first. What the cap does not do is it does not propose prescriptive regulations or development standards. So the purpose of the cap is it will establish goals, objectives, and actions, and as part of preparing that, it included a community-wide greenhouse gas inventory, as well as a future emissions forecasting, greenhouse gas reduction scenario analysis, that's fun to say this, climate vulnerability assessment, climate adaptation strategy, and it also has an implementation and monitoring program to make sure that we're implementing it correctly and on time. By having this framework, it helps guide the city work programs as well as our capital improvement programs. It helps identify grant opportunities, and it also assists us with operational decisions. So what have we learned as part of this process? So the biggest part was we completed a 2023 community inventory. The purpose for 2023 was because this effort started in 2024 and 2023 was our first year of complete data. From that, we learned that 63% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from cars. 31% comes from building energy and 4% come from off-road equipment such as landscaping and construction equipment and approximately 1% each from water and wastewater and solid waste. We also learned that many participants from the community shared a vision for a more sustainable Costa Mesa that included renewable energy sources such as solar, expanded access to green spaces such as parks, playgrounds, and community gardens, improved transportation options such as biking, walking, and public transit, and increased efforts to compost and recycle to reduce waste in the community. What we also learned was how much emissions we actually give off in total, which is just over 850,000 metric tons of CO2. And on the top, you'll see the business as usual line. What that represents is if we didn't make any changes today and just continued on living our life the way we've been, you would see a slight increase in greenhouse gas emissions that correlates with our population increase. And then on the right-hand side, you see emissions reductions from statewide action. So that's how far emissions will go down under state requirements. And then you have this thing on the side that says local gap, and that's where we can have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions in order to get to the 2045 goal that you see in that little green dot on the right-hand side. So the CAP plan is organized into eight primary sectors that collectively address both community-wide emissions as well as municipal operations. Those include cars or on-road transportation, energy in the built environment, water and wastewater, solid waste, off-road equipment, people and community, natural and urban lands, and then city operations or municipal. And the goal for all of these are what you see on the right hand side to protect our environment by reducing greenhouse gas and conserving natural resources, safeguarding our community by preparing for climate related hazard, supporting economic growth by promoting sustainable businesses and job creation, as well as plan for our future by aligning with state and federal climate goals and providing access to state grants. So I'm not going to read these next two slides. But the purpose of them is to show that for each one of those eight sectors, there's an overarching purpose or goal. And then out of that, what the plan does is it identifies objectives as well as actions to implement those objectives in order to reach those goals. So here we have, for one example, municipal leadership, demonstrate leadership through city operations by improving energy efficiency in municipal facilities. Transition city fleet vehicles to electric vehicles, incorporate sustainability into city operations and so on and so forth. And then we do the same here with wastewater reduction, natural systems, climate adaptation and community education and partnership, all with objectives as well. And now each sector addresses different aspects of a climate action, but a lot of these are interconnected. An example of this is our urban tree canopy. So the more trees we have, the more carbon that we sequester or draw out. And in addition, that also reduces our urban heat island effect. It also improves our air quality, enhances neighborhood aesthetics, and supports environmental justice objectives. In addition, investments in our active transportation improve mobility and they reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve public health, and increase community resilience. The cap includes an implementation plan of 108 implementation actions, 20 of which need to be completed in the first two years. So for the safety element, the safety element is the city's primary policy document for protecting residents, businesses, and infrastructure from natural and human-caused hazards. State law does require that the safety element address a number of items, including flooding, earthquakes, fire, emergency preparedness, as well as disaster response. THERE IS SEVERAL NEW LEGISLATION REQUIREMENTS FOR CITIES TO INCORPORATE CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND UPDATED HAZARD INFORMATION INTO THEIR GENERAL PLANS AS WELL. THAT'S INCLUDED UNDER SENATE BILL 379 WHICH REQUIRES CITIES TO EVALUATE HOW CLIMATE CHANGE MAY AFFECT FUTURE HAZARDS AS WELL AS SENATE BILL 1035 WHICH REQUIRES US TO UPDATE OUR HOUSING OR HOUSING, SORRY, SAFETY ELEMENT USING UPDATED FLOOD AND FIRE INFORMATION FROM THE MOST UP TO DATE RESOURCES. State law encourages consistency between the city safety element and a local hazard mitigation plan. And what a local hazard mitigation plan is is a document that's required if we want to be eligible for FEMA funds in the event of an emergency. The city did adopt to do an extensive update on our local hazard mitigation plan in 2022. which was adopted by the City Council and it addresses an extensive analysis of natural hazards, community vulnerabilities, emergency preparedness capabilities, and hazard mitigation strategies. By incorporating the local hazard mitigation plan into the safety element ensures that the general plan reflects current information and maintains consistency among the city's long-range planning documents and emergency management documents. So the best way to think about this for us is like a three-legged stool. You got your safety element, which is supported by your local hazard mitigation plan, which can also be supported by your climate action and adaptation plan. Key updates to the safety element include specifically integrating the local hazard mitigation plan, it adds climate adaptation planning, it updates hazard data and technical information with the most recent information provided, addresses flooding, drought, extreme heat, and wildfire, strengthens emergency preparedness and infrastructure resilience, as well as aligns the safety element with the cap and current state requirements. Sorry. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ana.

Thanks Amber. Okay. Our environmental justice policy update last, but certainly not least at its core environmental justice seeks to ensure that residents have equitable access to clean, healthy and safe environments and meaningful opportunities to participate in the public decision making process. So California law recognizes that some communities experienced disproportionate environmental burdens. And that's due to a variety of factors that include environmental conditions, infrastructure deficiencies, and socioeconomic factors. So at its core, the overall goals of environmental justice are to reduce health and safety risks in EJ communities, improve overall health in those communities, and achieve equitable distribution of both environmental benefits and burdens. Back in February of this year, the city received a LEAP grant to update its environmental justice policies, which I'll refer to as EJ for most of this presentation. That grant, which was funded by SCAG and administered through OCOG, included a scope of a variety of different things, not limited to implementing a lot of our housing element programs, updates to our state density bonus law ordinance, ADU ordinance, looking at affordable housing incentives, Those components are going to be included in the neighborhoods where we all belong process, but the environmental justice update is included in the updates with CAP and safety element for all the reasons that Amber already explained. The grant originally identified a completion timeframe of June 30th, 2026. But that was since extended to September 30th, 2026 across California jurisdictions who received this grant in order to give a little bit more time to complete the efforts. As I mentioned before, Kurt Nagel from the inner West team is that's the consultant that was hired under this grant is here tonight. He has been assisting the city with implementing our update and can help answer any questions. Okay, so what does state law say and what does it require? SB 35 and SB 1000 are the bills that identify EJ requirements for state law. They identify and establish policies within the general plan that promote environmental justice, and they require the city to address specific EJ topics. Those are listed on the screen to the right. They also require cities to prioritize areas that are defined as EJ communities. And I'll show you what that looks like on the next slide. So when do we need to implement EJ policies? Well, state law requires communities to identify and establish these policies when more than two elements of the general plan are being updated. So we're doing quite a few things this year on the advanced planning side. Updating our safety element, housing element revision, an FDC specific plan, and the neighborhoods where we all belong process. All of those trigger this requirement to include environmental justice policies. And in addition to that, this effort supports our city council's strategic priorities. Okay, so what defines an EJ community? They are communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution, hazards, and degradation. The residents in EJ communities are typically burdened by social and economic factors. So as you can see on the slide here in the maps, there's currently six census tracts in Costa Mesa that are considered EJ communities. EJ mapping typically occurs and is updated annually. So just to note, the EJ policies, the draft policies that you reviewed as part of this packet are not specific to certain geographic areas. but in a lot of cases they call out special attention or prioritization given to EJ communities. So if at any point in the future, EJ communities change within Costa Mesa, the established general plan policies will still be applied appropriately to the most updated census tract that are identified as EJ communities. So as part of this overall update, these are kind of the three core elements of what the city and consultant have done. The first step was to identify policies that are already in our existing general plan that can be constituted as EJ policies. In addition, we hosted public workshops to hear more from the community about their concerns as it relates to environmental justice and ongoing needs. And then finally, we drafted additional and modified EJ policies in order to meet state requirements and also address those community concerns that we heard. So the overall overarching goals with this process are kind of four pieces. One, make sure that we meet state law. Two, complete the process identified within that LEAP grant, which is September of this year. incorporate the public input that we received as part of this process and complete it under the existing general plan EIR, i.e. not to trigger any additional environmental analysis as our scope doesn't allow for it and neither does our timeline. So now that we've established that, here's a summary of the steps that we took. So first, our consultant conducted an audit of the city's existing general plan to identify policies in there that already constitute as EJ policies and identify the EJ topics, excuse me, and address the EJ topics. And if you look to the right of the screen, there's a little symbol there. So when this comes back to the planning commission on August 10th for recommendation, you're going to see the general plan and you're going to see existing general plan policies as well as draft modified policies or new policies. And if they have that symbol next to them, they're constituted as an EJ policy. So what we found throughout the audit was that we have a lot of existing general plan policies that already do constitute as EJ policies. They're in a variety of our housing element chapters. In fact, the only chapters where we don't have existing general plan EJ policies are in the growth management element and the historical and cultural resources element. All of the EJ policies that were identified address all of the EJ topics as required by state law. but they especially address those that are highlighted in green on this third bullet point. And then finally the audit identified areas where we can strengthen our EJ policies. And those are identified in blue here. Now onto new and modified EJ policies. There were kind of two buckets in where these were devised. One to meet state law. So language that prioritizes EJ communities have been added to a lot of the existing policies in our general plan. And new policies promote sustainable development patterns and they support access to healthy foods because those were identified as gap areas in our audit. And then second, we included modified and new policies to address community concerns and incorporate input that we heard. A lot of the community concerns that we heard are already addressed by a variety of policies that are in the general plan. But as you can see here, these are kind of the umbrella topics where new and revised policies support based on what we heard. And if we go to the next slide, please. Thank you. This is kind of a summary of all of the new and modified policies. They build on the existing general plan and they place additional emphasis on improving access to parks, trails, and recreational facilities, expanding tree canopies to reduce urban heat island effects, improve walking, bicycling, and transit connections, support access to healthy foods, reduce population exposure where feasible, encourage meaningful public participation, and particularly find ways to increase participation within those identified EJ community areas, and prioritize infrastructure improvements within EJ community areas where it's appropriate. Can we go back one more thing to say? Thank you. The draft EJ policies are currently out for public review. Amber's going to talk about all the draft documents that are out for public review. So any additional feedback that we receive during the public review process will continue to revise as we come back to Planning Commission and go on to City Council.

All right. Thank you, Anna. So as far as public participation went, we really had a strong concerted effort on how we were going to address this. Judith came up with a great plan as well in order to do extended outreach, and it kicked off with our Earth Day celebration in 2025. Prior to that, we were doing a bunch of analysis and research and requesting information from utilities to establish our baseline. But Earth Day 2025, although it was wet and rainy, it was still a great Earth Day event. We had a lot of great participation. And then we also were at the Earth Day event for 2026 where we were allowed to share and able to share all the policies that had come out of The year's worth of efforts. We also did pop-up events with concerts in the park as well as bike training classes and other engagement activities included a Dedicated project website as well as an updated sustainability website to tie those two things together social media posts in reels Surveys both to city employees as well as the public at large stakeholder meetings both for internal meaning city staff and what the city needed to do and or could do in order to implement things as well as external meaning residents and community members. We also presented at the Coastline ROP sustainability class. That's a new cohort at Coastline. So it was fun to get to present to them and hear their suggestions for the cap as well. We also had coffee shop flyers put up just to get the word out further. We did utility site visits, so we went to Mesa Water District, as well as ground rod resurgence facilitation, and then we also provided city council updates. There was a public open house on April 30th of this year where we invited the public to look at all the different policies. There was an interactive meeting. Activities there. Those are some of the pictures on the right where we went over not only the cat policies, but the environmental justice policies as well. So the city's outreach efforts were conducted as part of the climate action and adaptation planning process, and then we incorporated the environmental justice outreach as able as well. So for the public review of the draft documents, the cap policies were available from April 23rd through May 26th. Again, we had the open house during that time period. And then the draft safety element update and draft policies were available for public review starting on July 1st, and then the complete draft cap was made available for public review on July 20th. All public review periods ended on August 4th of 2026, and we received one comment letter. So thank you very much for that. Following the study session, staff will consider planning commission's feedback, evaluate all public comments that we receive, and prepare any necessary revisions prior to any formal adoption hearings. So with that, thank you very much. Staff recommends you receive this presentation, and we look forward to any of your comments.

All right. Thank you very much, Amber and Ana. Commissioners, do you have questions of staff? And I'll just note we'll hold for comments after we've had public comment. So Commissioner Dixon.

And just you had mentioned that some was still out for public comment. and that others that ended August 4th. I apologize. I'm ahead of you. I understand that. You're living in a future world right now. I get it. I get it. It's a great presentation and it's probably going to be used August 10th. Thank you for that. But can you just clarify what's still available for comment?

Yes. So all three documents are still available for comment. So the cap, the safety element update, and the environmental justice update. Thank you for clarifying that.

I know if I had Commissioner Martinez probably would have because it just kind of and also could you when we're bringing back the survey results can we just have some detail on the survey results as far as you know which ones came in online which ones came in from a public process and then sort of a tally of the different you know because I've seen some phenomenal survey results in the past and some that sort of just kind of give sort of a summary. I think we should see a little more granular detail. And knowing that going in at the front end should make it less burdensome to produce that. So I would just request that if it's not already in the plans. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions of staff?

Yes, sir.

Go ahead, Commissioner Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think my first one is on the CAP. Are we planning on doing any kind of CEQA study for the CAP?

So I'm happy to start with that one. So as part of this process, we did look at if this should be a CEQA qualified cap. And in doing so, we realized that we have a lot of similar efforts currently happening right now, particularly with the neighborhoods where we all belong, that has an exceedingly extensive greenhouse gas emissions analysis in there. So we felt that this would be a duplicative effort with it and that the projects could tear off of that greenhouse gas analysis effort so as to not have a double greenhouse gas analysis. It was a cost savings to the city as well as also makes this plan a lot more flexible in a lot of ways for the community also.

Got it. So if a project is tearing off, it's going to be based off neighborhoods where we all belong. It will not be based off the cap. That's correct. Got it. OK. For our emissions target, we're not going for zero. Is that correct? We're going for the AB1279 target, which is what? What is that? I just saw that in the thing, but I didn't see what exactly that target is.

Yes, thank you, Commissioner Martinez. So we have two milestones for the cap. The first one is 2030, and that one aligns with SB 32, and that's 40% below 1990 levels. And then the next one you're thinking of is AB 1279. That is essentially a carbon neutrality goal, but for cities with caps, the goal is 85% reduction in anthropogenic, that's human-caused emissions, below the 1990 levels, so that's the one that we are aligning with.

Got it. For our safety element update, are we also planning on updating the figures that are in the safety element, or are we just planning on keeping them as they were adopted in 2015?

So all the affected figures have been updated to reflect current day best available information. For example, our fire hazard zones are reflected in there for our high fire hazard zones based on the new maps that came out last year.

Got it. I just saw the oil well map, which is figure S1. And I saw like a 2015 map. That's why I was like, I don't know if there even is an updated map for that one.

Yeah unfortunately no there were a lot that still seemed like very outdated but we would go back and check each one and that still has the most current information so.

Okay those are my questions.

Thank you. Okay anyone else? Commissioner Andrade?

Yeah so is there I would love to have an opportunity to include some of the comments provided by Coastal Corridor Alliance. I think there are some great recommendations, and I know that you said in your presentation this is to give us a general framework, not regulation. So let me know if one maybe goes over in that definition. So on page 318, page 4 of their comment, Consider adding an action to include public promotion and incentives for residents and developments to participate in homegrown native landscapes. And I think this would be kind of along the conversations we were having with the, well, that I was commenting with the developers prior to this, right? We want folks to, we want any developers or anybody, I would say anyone with a sidewalk, facing a sidewalk to incorporate, help us meet this goal, by adding trees and helping us expand our our tree canopy defining urban greening to include recovery for local native species would be another great one on the water and wastewater sector the i would say all three bullets that they're listing there all references and examples of methods to include and be focused on local native pallets and cultivars. And adding an action item focused on low impact development that mimics natural hydrology. I think we saw that in one of the past applicants. They had permeable sidewalks or something like that. I think that's a great opportunity where, again, it's a great way to capture some of the rainwater that we may get. On Sector 9, people in community, page 10 and 11, right on page 5 of their public comment as well. Prioritizing implementing long-term solutions on native habitats and watershed. Sustainability of source materials in an effort to provide relief and avoid plastics as much as possible. Like, for example, something like that that I would see is the plastic bollards that we have in our bike paths, like maybe those could be concrete or some form of that that are more solid than X. That way we really protect our bikers. Um, uh, everything that along page five on that attachment, people in community engaging, um, engaging us Corp of engineers, urban water district and County of orange and allowing us to implement this. engaging local organizations that are heavily invested like themselves. And then on page seven of their comments, oh, in some of this education, I love the highlights on education that is highlighted in the plan. You know, again, I'm coming, it was actually very validating to see that one of the EJ census tracts is predominantly my district, but not a surprise. So I appreciate having some of those efforts talking about walkability and safety. So like I said earlier, slowing down our streets is a predominantly in common request that our community has expanding the green spaces. I think something in the on page 310, page 12 of the report, supporting access to healthy food. I don't know if along that could be definitions or opportunities where we can have small farmers markets in our community that can serve, again, helping address some of those EJ track areas to make food accessible. What else? Oh, along waste reduction and education. I don't know if there's an opportunity to maybe include in one of the objectives in action. Because my, especially again, looking at this EJ tracked maps that you have, District 4 is predominantly renter. So I know that we do recycling plans and right, like our local garbage collectors prevent. So our, my point is our renter community needs a lot of education. Our landlords of the rental community, the landlords really need to abide by these expectations. I live now in three different properties here in Costa Mesa, and none of those landlords actually participate in the recycling program. I have to go out of my way to go to the plant to go and recycle. So that would be a great opportunity. Oh, I don't know how this lines up. Late last week I participated in the Shalimar community feedback session. It was discussing opportunities for the lot adjacent to the park that is being remodeled. And in conversations with the developers that were there, as we're talking about feasibility and who's going to pay for this and opportunities, one of the things that you know, one of the comments or the requests that the community had for that center was, um, of course it was a whole bunch of kids that came out. So all the kids wanted a pool and I was like, okay, maybe not a pool will fit here, but like a splash pad. And that kind of got us going on a conversation that again, considering that shall, I mean, all of district four is heavily renter. Not a lot of folks have pools there. Um, and heavy concrete, right. It's very dense. Um, that community center could maybe serve as a, emergency response site where, you know, should electricity go out, there's a battery saving tool or mechanism happening there. You know, when it's hot like it is right now, it can be a cooling site that is accessible and inviting to the community. So kind of this is a separate event that was happening in parallel. I don't know if that's an opportunity to incorporate that as an opportunity and maybe help us check off another box and help address some of the EJ RESPONSE TO THIS COMMUNITY. THAT'S ALL I GOT. THANK YOU.

OKAY. IF THERE ARE NO MORE QUESTIONS OF STAFF FROM COMMISSION, I'M GOING TO OPEN PUBLIC COMMENTS. ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK IN CHAMBERS, PLEASE APPROACH EITHER PODIUM. ALL RIGHT. SEEING NO ONE. DO WE HAVE ANYBODY ON ZOOM OR BY PHONE?

NO, MR. CHAIR.

OK. I am going to close public comments. All right. I will reopen public comments.

As part of the cap, did that take into account any of the Fairview Development Center construction and development?

all the added housing. We'll have staff respond to that. OK, thank you. All right, thank you. OK, now I'm closing public comments. Commissioners, any further questions or comments?

Yes. Yes, go ahead, Commissioner Martinez. Comments for after. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes, so I think this one is kind of question slash comment, right? So what we're doing here is we're planning for this local gap. of how to get to 15%, 85% below 1990 levels. And so the 106 different actions that we have listed in this plan are how we're going to get there, essentially. So I'm looking through all of these actions. both in the plan and using appendix E. But what I don't see there is like a quantifiable metric of like this, implementing this action gives us this range-ish of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So that would tell us like, doing all of these things is gonna close that local gap. And I can't see the math on that. I'm sure you guys have done it. It's probably somewhere. Is it possible to add that in with appendix E? Or is there a reason it wasn't included in the first place?

You're really close. It's Appendix D. It has all the math for all the quantifiable greenhouse gas reduction.

It has all the math.

Yeah.

I've missed it.

No, you're all good. There's a lot. And it's a really dense one.

Thank you. OK. So I am going to have to go through that before next meeting. But in that same realm, since I haven't gone through it, I don't know exactly what the numbers are. But I'll just point out a few of these actions and I guess what my concerns are with how the actions are worded. So E3 increased carbon free energy supply C says, consider joining OCPA. We have considered it. The task has been done twice now. We've considered it. Have we reduced greenhouse gas emissions? No, we have not. Because we didn't join OCPA. We considered it. And there's others that are phrased like that, like explore providing incentives for projects that commit to installing all zero emission appliances. OK, let's all think about it. Let's think about these incentives. We're exploring them in our heads. It's done. It's been accomplished. Did we reduce greenhouse gas emissions? No, we didn't, because all we did was explore providing the incentives. So to the extent that Appendix D has all these, or you keep the phrasing for all of these actions, I would say anyone that's phrased like that pretty loosely of an explore, a consider, a look into. The baseline of greenhouse gas emissions, emission reductions is zero if you just consider, explore, do all these things. And so I want to make sure that zero is in Appendix D. And then what actual implementation of the action is gonna give us. And that way maybe if I look through Appendix D, hopefully it's going to be a bit more than the local gap so that when we start going through these actions over the next 20 years, we can say, okay, well, we explored providing these incentives and actually it's not going to work out for us. And yes, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also it's just not going to work out for us. But that's OK, because our emissions reduction plan is a little bit more, and we're going to do it somewhere else. So let's make sure that our reductions plan isn't just exactly the local gap. That way, we can get there. And I hate to use the analogy, but it's kind of like RHNA, where we're doing a no-nut-loss finding to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, so I think a lot of these actions, great. I like that there's a set of 20 that we're saying within the next two years, let's actually take a look at all of these. Let's start providing them. If they're worded loosely, like the two I mentioned of explore providing incentives and consider joining OCPA, those are within the next two years. Let's make sure that we have some in there that are like outside of those top 20 that if we decide, hey, we already looked at OCPA twice, we're not doing it again, that we have a backup to look at for those top 20. Overall, other than that, I think good plan. I think my one other note, very small one, in the municipal section, it talks about our fleet since transportation is both the biggest source of emissions for the city as a whole, but also in our municipal sector, it's the biggest source of emissions. It says, let's move the fleet over to EVs. I've seen some other cities nearby who also provide e-bikes to their employees. How fun would that be? You can take the e-bike over to the development yard instead of driving over there and adding to the cars that are on the road. So let's, one more word in there for that goal. And I think those are all of my comments for this. I'll have to read appendix D. And when I do, I'll have maybe some more. But thank you so much.

Thank you. If I can add, I may not be able to make the next one. Just wanted two notes on Appendix D when you look at it. For each action, there's also performance indicators for each one. And that is how what is tied to our emission reduction quantification. And you will see that we do have a buffer. We did exceed our target, but it's a little buffer. The other thing they think it's important to note is that the state has very ambitious targets and the cap outlines one possible pathway to meet those. The cap will be monitored every year, and it's a living document. It can be adjusted. In reality, some of your actions may be more successful than others, and you can think of them as levers. So if one is being more successful, another one that is not as successful, you can be more aggressive somewhere, maybe feel that you've explored something and it didn't work out like you said, and move on. But it is intended to present one possible pathway. There are options within it. AND THAT'S WHY THE ROBUST ANNUAL MONITORING AND REPORTING WILL HELP YOU STAY ON TARGET.

WHAT ARE WE PROPOSING AS THIS ANNUAL MONITORING IMPLEMENTATION? IS THAT LIKE A CITY COUNCIL REVIEW EVERY YEAR? WHAT IS THE PROPOSAL?

So first, as you see in Appendix E, which you've looked at, that's a really helpful guide for staff as the implementation matrix. It assigns what department is responsible to implement each action. One of the other things that we'll be providing the city is an annual reporting template to help them go through each action and monitor its status if you're in the tracking metrics. And then it's up to the city I THINK IF IT WILL BE PRESENTED OR INCLUDED AS AN INTERNAL DOCUMENT.

I THINK THAT WOULD BE GOOD TO ADD SOME KIND OF ANNUAL CITY COUNCIL REVIEW OR PLANNING COMMISSION REVIEW JUST SO THERE'S A PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF ALL THE ACTIONS THAT THE CITY IS DOING AND MAYBE NOT DOING TO IMPLEMENT THIS PLAN THAT WE'VE SPENT A COUPLE OF YEARS ON. SO THANK YOU. Right.

Any other comments? Vice Chair Zick.

I'll try to keep it short since I know the audience is not here for this item. I appreciate the update to the safety plan. At first I didn't realize that it was an update. I hadn't seen it before, but in fact you'd presented it before. And the charts and diagrams, the maps in particular, I recall having. I found them to be very interesting. So thank you for that. The environmental justice policy. I guess that we're calling that an update. I've never seen it before. When I read through all these policy statements, I guess the one question I have is who at the city is responsible for reading those and translating them into action? Whose job is that? Charles' job or whose job?

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Zick. So I should clarify because you bring up a good point. The update refers to updating the general plan and all of its chapters. So we have not previously had environmental justice policies. They are new. So just wanted to clarify that as maybe the title was misleading. So apologies for that. No problem. The implementation of those measures will depend on where the policies live. and the chapters that they're in, there are some policies that relate to, for example, transportation, where the transportation division will be responsible for its implementation, particularly where you see it say, you know, capital improvement projects or roadway projects or transportation improvement projects with emphasis to environmental justice policies, you know, as appropriate, they would be responsible for implementation. There are other policy measures like public participation where most likely it would be the community development department responsible for that because we lead a big portion of our outreach efforts, not our only, but just to give you some examples.

Okay, and is this environmental justice policy document, is that coming back to us or is this like the final time we see it?

No, what you will see coming back on August 10th is all of the general plan chapters and where those policies are identified to be environmental justice policies and the updates as proposed.

I'll save the rest of my comments on that for then. The cap. I have to admit I know nothing about this. And your presentation today I think was useful because I'm starting from scratch on understanding what it is why we have it, and what it actually does. As you were presenting it, to me, it felt more like a visioning document than an actionable document. Yet it's so thick that as a suspicious person of government, and I have sort of a governmental role here, of course, It kind of forces me to want to read all 500 pages of this to make sure there are no gotchas that later somebody would say, well, on page 237, that's why you can't put a fountain in your front yard. Those kinds of things. I don't think that's restricted. So I'm a little concerned about that CAP document. I want to ask more about it next time we see it. I want to know what the cost is to the city. I assume that this is something that maybe is... I don't know if it's managed by Mr. Springer's group or not, but I really want to understand more about that. It sure, I mean, it sounds meaningful, but it doesn't sound actionable to me, and to the extent it is, I want to know where those actions are and how they affect residents. Thank you.

THANK YOU. I'M GOING TO BE VERY QUICK TOO BECAUSE I KNOW WE WANT TO GET TO OUR NEXT ITEM. I SHARE THE EXACT SAME CONCERNS OF COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ. I'M GLAD HE ALREADY ARTICULATED ALL OF THAT. TO ME THESE ARE QUANTITATIVE TARGETS. WE'VE ALREADY DONE THE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS SO THE ACTIONS SHOULD BE QUANTITATIVE TOO AND I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU NOT TO BURY THINGS IN THE APPENDIX THAT SHOULD BE FRONT AND CENTER. HERE ARE THE TWO PAGES WITH THE 20 ACTIONS THAT WE'RE TAKING. AND THEN HERE IS THE RESULTING REDUCTION FOR EACH OF THOSE ACTIONS. I'M LOOKING AT THE 20 ACTIONS IN 20 YEARS AND I JUST DON'T KNOW WHETHER THOSE ACTIONS, SOME OF THEM ARE A LITTLE MORE AMBIGUOUS LIKE COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ SAID. I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THOSE ARE the actions to lead us in four years to a 300,000 metric ton reduction. So I want to know if that analysis has been done. BECAUSE THAT SEEMS VERY AMBITIOUS. WE'RE GOING FROM 850,000 TO ROUGHLY 550,000 IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME. SO ARE THOSE THE THINGS THAT ARE REALLY GOING TO TAKE US THERE? MY OTHER COMMENT IS THAT BECAUSE A LOT OF THE REDUCTIONS ARE TIED TO THINGS THAT WE DON'T CONTROL AS A MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION, especially broadly related to transportation, to the extent that we can have our own focus on municipal operations and what those reductions are. I think in terms of where we can show some measurable progress to the community and where our tax dollars go, that will be important for the future. So any other comments, commissioners?

Just briefly. Go ahead. So I'd like to see if, If it's not already in there, and I apologize if I miss it, I know there's an overview of the cap process and the state law and all that good stuff, but I would like to see how, and this is not a comment about a council policy decision because that ship has sailed, but we could have used the county cap. We could have been part of that. It's not required that we do our own cap, but the council decided they wanted to go in that direction and have our own cap. So I would like to see a breakdown, if at all possible, if it's available, because I know the county cap was presented in January of 26. And I know there's also a regional cap that was done previously with all these different agencies. And I've noticed that some of those numbers as far as the percentage of on-road are quite different from ours. So I would like to make sure that we're not coming up with our own set of numbers that are dramatically different from all of these other numbers that are out there and are concurrently in progress. So if we can do any sort of like, if it's not too great of an effort to have an understanding of how our cap compares to, for instance, Orange County's cap or another neighboring city's cap. I think that would be helpful to understand that our targets are realistic and that our quantifications are realistic in the way that we're making the assumptions are realistic as well. So those are my comments. Thank you.

All right. I will close the item. Can I get a motion? Yeah, go ahead.

Receive and file?

All right, motion by Commissioner Dixon, second by Commissioner Andrade. Let's just call for the question.

Motion carries 7-0.

Okay, I appreciate everybody's patience. I wanna definitely get to the next item. I think we could all use a five minute break, stretch our legs, get staff to come back here. So let's come back at 8.23 by my clock. So five minutes. Thank you. No, but we don't have CMTV, so. ALL RIGHT, WE ARE BACK ON THE RECORD. SORRY FOR THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. I DO UNDERSTAND THERE WAS A POWER OUTAGE AROUND THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD. IT WASN'T JUST THE CLIMATE ACTION PLAN. WHERE ARE OUR GENERATORS? YEAH, MY WIFE SAID WE DID. ALL RIGHT. MS. GREEN, CAN YOU READ THE TITLE FOR NEW BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER TWO?

Thank you. Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan Study Session and presentation by Ms. Stacey, Principal Planner, Ms. McGill, Planning Manager. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Ms. Stacey, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, and Commissioners. I'm Melinda Dacey, Principal Planner with Community Development Department. With me this evening are Director Carrie Tai, Ana McGill, Planning Manager, and Paul Martin, Transportation Services Manager. In addition, our consultant team is here this evening with Karen Gulley, Molly Mendoza, and Jennifer Kelly with Placeworks, and with their team, Paul Herman, Traffic Engineer with Fair and Pierce. THIS EVENING THE PLANNING COMMISSION WILL RECEIVE A PRESENTATION FROM STAFF AND THE CONSULTANT TEAM THAT WILL PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF THE FDC SITE, COMMUNITY OUTREACH EFFORTS TO DATE, AN OVERVIEW OF THE PUBLIC HEARING DRAFT SPECIFIC PLAN AND THE CORRESPONDING ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS IN ADDITION TO THE NEXT STEPS IN THE PROCESS. WITH THAT WE'LL TALK ABOUT THE BACKGROUND AND SITE AREA EVOLUTION OF THE FDC SITE. So several actions by the city and state have laid the groundwork for this project. The city began preparation of the specific plan in 2022 and 2023. The state passed several bills relating to the property, which established certain parameters that include the site being a mixed income, mixed use site where housing is one of the main focuses for the specific plan. The city and applicable state agencies initially met on a weekly basis that has since transitioned to biweekly or as needed meetings. However, there was significant coordination that took place early on in the process regarding the state agency's future plans that incorporate the state's identified needs in the Senate bills you see here, along with the city's priorities that I'll touch on next. I would also like to make a clarification to the staff report, which notes that the FTC site is 115 acres. That size is based on the image on the screen as initially reviewed, and I will touch on the actual FTC site as it is being pursued today in the future slide. As part of the legislation shown on the prior slide, the Department of General Services, or DGS, conducted an infrastructure assessment as part of their due diligence for preparing to dispose of the site. Based on existing road infrastructure, the residential units in their study was capped at 2,500 units with an assumption of 500 affordable units. Subsequent to the DGS report being prepared and the SB 188 legislation, the city adopted its six cycle housing element that includes 920 lower income affordable units and established a 2,300 unit minimum currently studied within the specific plan. SB 188 further mandates that the city must ensure the specific plan be financially viable to realize future housing construction. Accordingly, a financial feasibility analysis was prepared, which was presented to the planning commission and city council in fall of 2025. This analysis identified that 3,450 units would be a break even for the project where some gap financing is still needed to be viable. DGS provided a letter, which is included as an attachment to the staff report that reiterates these items and supports the concept of 4,000 units. As noted on the prior slide, concept two on the screen is the 3,450 unit. Do you want me to pause or shall I keep?

Pause for the moment. Just one more shot. All right, we are back on. Hopefully we'll continue for the rest of the evening. Maybe that's somebody telling us to keep this a little bit on the brief side. So keep that in mind. All right, go ahead, Ms. Daisy.

Thank you, Chair. I will pick up on where I left off. So as noted on the prior slide, concept number two on the screen is the 3,450 units, which depicts the gap in financing of approximately $5 million. And concept number three includes the current proposed 4,000 residential unit maximum included within the specific plan. The key metric for determining financial feasibility is an internal rate of return that is at least 15%. Both concept two and concept three are close to that metric. So all of these factors result in the final specific plan boundary as depicted on the screen. As you can see here, the Mark Lane properties and the parcel along Merrimack are no longer part of the specific plan boundary. In addition, the EOC site removed 15 acres of available area for study under the specific plan. In addition, the Department of Developmental Services, or DDS, will retain 15 acres, which leaves a future master developer with 80 acres developable land to provide for housing, open space and parks, and resident supporting retail and non-residential uses to create the mixed-use neighborhood. Next, an overview of the community outreach will be discussed. The city held five community workshops, each with three separate meeting dates at various locations throughout the community. These culminated in the first three phases of the overall planning process for the development of the specific plan. This slide shows where the city is currently at in the process for the development of the specific plan. So the first three workshops were designed to develop the vision and guiding principles that are incorporated into the plan today and to learn more about and refine the community's preferences for the future neighborhood regarding the types of uses and spaces that they would like to see. In between these workshops, the City Council and Planning Commission also received project status updates. All of these efforts resulted in the fourth workshop, which previewed various land use alternatives for community input, and the community survey was also released. After the fourth workshop and survey was concluded, the project team presented land use concepts with further refinements that are financially feasible for the Planning Commission at three meetings in 2025 and one City Council meeting. This led to a major milestone for the project because the project team received direction to begin environmental review and draft the specific plan as currently prepared today with a study of up to 4,000 residential units and 14 acres of open space and 35,000 square feet of non-residential uses. The public was presented a draft specific plan for their review and input in March of 2026 and it was available for a 30-day public comment period. And Karen will touch a little bit more on this later. All of these outreach events were advertised through various methods, including social media posts, flyers, project website, email notifications, and a community mailer sent to over 40,000 residential properties. This resulted in the community participation numbers shown on the slide throughout the engagement process. In addition, the city hosted a community Q&A last week where the presentation was provided similar to this evening's and allowed an open forum for the public to ask questions of staff to prepare the community for the upcoming decision-making hearings. And I will turn it over to Karen Gulley to continue the presentation.

Thank you very much. Good evening. It is a pleasure to be here tonight. Happy to go forward talking more about the specific plan itself. So as you know, a specific plan is a land use tool. that is codified by our state that allows you to customize the zoning, the planning, the design standards, the implementation process, all for a particular area of the city. And that is what we have been doing over the past few years for this very important piece of property. Chapter one begins with a well-documented history of the site itself, which is important because of its status as an historic district. It also includes a description of what needs to happen with respect to amendments to the zoning code and to the general plan. Chapter three goes into the vision and guiding principles. The vision and guiding principles have been refined throughout this process, as it should be. We started off with draft vision and guiding principles, and as the details of the plan emerged, as comments came in, we've refined them. At the end of the day, what you have in front of you are a series of guiding principles that are meant to guide that next step in development, which is tentative track map level design. Chapter four goes into the land plan itself and this is often considered probably the most important chapter of the document. It establishes a series of new zoning designations and each of those are described and defined. Along with that, so we've basically got the DDS housing on the north side which is adjacent to the harbor village apartment project and will be property retained by the state over time. and will result in a project similar to Harbor Village, but denser. And then you've got the rest of the residential, and that's the orange color there, and that is the residential that will be part of the master developer's obligation. Then you've got the mixed use commercial category. This is showing, it's a floating zone, the commercial component of it. In the land use plan, we're showing it along the main corridors, but essentially it can happen and be flexible in terms of its final location. And then finally, we have a designation called publicly accessible open space. This includes your public parks. It includes a paseo that was very much desired by the community. It includes off-road hiking trails as well. Now, in terms of the overall build-out, it also establishes a minimum of 2,300 units, up to 4,000 units. The commercial component would be 10,000 square feet minimum, up to about 35,000 square feet. And again, that tracks with some of the market analysis and what could be supported by the new residents within the project. And then the open space designation. This is publicly accessible open space. This does not include the private or common open space. The minimum publicly accessible open space is 14 acres. And then the housing plan itself accommodates the very low, low, moderate income as was dictated by your housing element. And as well as in the above moderate income units, that is the minimum. And that represents 40% low and very low housing. The land use plan also goes into detail with respect to permitted uses, allowing for a variety of residential types. We want a wide variety of residential housing types. And we've developed the standards to accommodate that. The types of communities serving retail, again, this should be very broad but targeted to more neighborhood serving uses. And then also allows for a variety of events to take place within the area. The land plan also provides the zoning or the future development standards that a master developer is going to need to adhere to. It sets maximum building height. It sets setbacks. It also addresses building frontages, how buildings should orient to streets and other similar design requirements. This is an illustrative from the document that begins to show how some of these requirements actually then are transformed into a building form and layout that really does prioritize open space and outdoor amenities. Chapter five is the mobility plan, and this covers all modes of travel. It establishes a required backbone road system here that you see in red. The red backbone system includes the promenade, IT INCLUDES SOME LOCAL ROADS AS WELL THAT NEED TO BE PROVIDED AND WHILE THERE IS SOME FLEXIBILITY IN THEIR FINAL ALIGNMENT, THEY ARE A REQUIREMENT OF THE SPECIFIC PLAN. THE OTHER YELLOW ROADS HERE ARE LOCAL ROADS AND THERE IS FLEXIBILITY IN HOW THEY'RE GOING TO ACTUALLY BE LOCATED AND DESIGNED. GO BACK REAL QUICK. WE ARE SHOWING A SECONDARY ACCESS AND WE'LL TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT IN THE NEXT SLIDE AND THAT IS A STAND ALONE ALIGNMENT AS WELL. So the secondary access road is intended to be required at a certain threshold of housing units and that's based upon an analysis done by our traffic consultant that identified about the number of units in which that's going to be And secondary access is going to be required in order to get all the way to 4,000 units. The alignment is flexible. It is shown here based upon what we believe is the minimal impact to the number of golf course holes on the site. But there is a process in the specific plan that requires the master developer to get engaged with the city and the golf course community to define the final location of that road. In terms of other access roads that have been looked at, initially it was believed that Merrimack Way was the secondary access road. It was later uncovered that essentially while the state owns it, they did enter into a lease agreement with the developer for village apartments. and that is in fact a private road. It will be available to the future project area as an emergency access. The other road here shown in red was considered early on. It does impact both golf courses and it also impacts the city yard. In addition, the other reason why it was not considered feasible is because it will intersect with A private road that is now serving the EOC and the public is not allowed to go into that area. Okay, Chapter 6 covers the open space plan and the requirements. As I mentioned before, minimum of 14 acres of publicly accessible open space is required. What you see here is a representation of that. The final configuration sizing and location can move. In addition to the public open space, there's a requirement for 90 square feet per unit for each residential unit, and that includes indoor and outdoor common areas, private open space like patios and balconies, or plaza areas. The commercial requirement, if in fact the commercial component wants to come in as a standalone commercial neighborhood center, There is a requirement for 5,000 square feet of public use to be designed. There's a series of design requirements for how that can be done. But it's basically required so that you've got an area that encourages outdoor dining, has a place for gathering within the commercial center. And then finally, what's important to note is that the general plan goal slash standard of 4.26 acres per 1,000 population has been carried forward into the specific plan. And this can be met through a combination of land dedication, park improvements, and in lieu fees. This is an illustrative that shows how some of those open spaces can be integrated. The infrastructure plan covers all facets of infrastructure and services. So as we had talked about earlier, everything onsite needs to be taken out and replaced. There is adequate water supply, but the existing onsite water system needs to be replaced, as does the sewer system. In addition, public safety facilities were evaluated, and although they're not currently proposed onsite, they are permitted and may be considered in the future. And then finally, the plan talks about a nexus study to develop new impact fees for improvements that are both on-site and off-site. Finally, Chapter 8 of the specific plan establishes a development review application. This is a very different kind of project for the city. So much of this is relatively new. in terms of how the city's gonna move forward in reviewing step by step what is being proposed by the master developer, how it adheres with the specific plan requirements, and other aspects of the city code. It establishes a timeline and responsibility for implementation. It also gets into a lot of detail about what's gonna be required and a general layout of those steps. It also does require a transportation demand management program that will be submitted early on. And then it also includes identification of responsible parties for funding and maintenance. This is an example of one of the tables in the document that lists the type of improvements that are going to be needed to support future development. It identifies expected funding. And along with funding comes the ability to potentially set up a variety of different assessment districts. With that, I think, do you want to take this one? You want me to?

Go ahead. So next I'll talk about the updates that were made to the specific plan that were incorporating the public comments that were received with the March 2026 release of the public review draft specific plan, which have been carried forward into the public hearing draft specific plan that is attached to the staff report. So as noted, the public was able to provide comments on the public review draft specific plan for a period of 30 days that began on March 16th and concluded on April 15th, 2026. As part of the outreach for workshop number five, we held three community open houses at various locations and on different days throughout the community. In addition to the workshop stations that included all the different chapters that are incorporated into the specific plan, there was a little building block exercise so that the community was able to kinetically play with some wood blocks to get an idea of building height and how much that could potentially increase open space on the ground. Some of the edits that have been made to the specific plan address public comments that were received during the 30-day review period. Those led to refinements in the guiding principles and the vision of the specific plan, as well as refinements to the phasing details and implementation processes that Karen went over and reviewed for Chapter 8. And then there were some updates to the land use classifications to align with some recent code amendments that are being proposed and carried forward here at the city relating to economic development improvements. In addition, the parking minimums for residential were removed from the specific plan to be consistent with city council direction that was received back in March of 2026 this year. With that, I'll turn it back over to or I'll turn it over to Jennifer Kelly with Placeworks.

Good evening, commissioners. As Melinda noted, my name is Jennifer Kelly. I'm a senior associate with Placeworks and I'm serving as the project manager for the EIR for the specific plan. I'd first like to provide a general overview of the timeline for the EIR and summarize several key sequel milestones. Prior to the preparation of the EIR, the city issued a notice of preparation, which was circulated for a 30 day public review period in October of 2025. An in-person public scoping meeting was held on November 17th, 2025 to provide information to the community on the project and the EIR process. Subsequent to the NOP and scoping process, the draft EIR was noticed and made available for public comment for 48 days from May through July of 2025. A total of 14 comments were received on the draft EIR and comments focused on cumulative impacts, aesthetics, air quality, biological resources, hazards, hydrology and water quality, land use, noise, population, housing, public services, parks and recreation, transportation, tribal cultural resources, utilities, and alternatives. The final EIR is underway and will include responses to comments received during the public scoping period, as well as additions and corrections based on responses to comments and any subsequent changes to the specific plan. Next slide. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HIGHLIGHT KEY FINDINGS FROM THE DRAFT EIR. A DRAFT EIR WAS PREPARED AT THE PROGRAM LEVEL TO ANALYZE THE BUILDOUT, DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS AND IMPLEMENTATION PROGRAMS IDENTIFIED IN THE SPECIFIC PLAN. THE EIR EXAMINED THE PROJECT AGAINST 20 TOPICS PURSUANT TO THE CEQA GUIDELINES. UNDER CEQA THERE ARE FOUR IMPACT DETERMINATIONS THAT A PROJECT MAY RESULT IN WHICH INCLUDE NO IMPACT, less than significant, less than significant with mitigation, and significant and unavoidable. Four topics studied in the EIR, including air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs, were determined to result in significant and unavoidable impacts notwithstanding implementation of mitigation. In some cases, no feasible mitigation measures would be applicable at the specific plan level that would reduce impacts to less than significant. In summary, construction and operation of future development facilitated by the specific plan would result in a net increase of air pollutants, GHG emissions, and adverse impacts to biological resources, specifically aquatic resources, and historic resources associated with the FDC historic district. Next slide. With respect to alternatives, the alternatives evaluated in the draft EIR were selected in part for their potential to reduce or avoid the project's significant impacts while attaining most of the basic project objectives. CEQA guidelines requires EIRs to identify any alternatives that were considered but rejected as infeasible during the scoping process. Reasons alternatives may be rejected include failure to meet most of the basic project objectives, infeasibility, or inability to avoid significant environmental impacts. Alternatives that were considered in the draft EIR but rejected include the alternative site, reduced density below housing element, full adaptive reuse, increased parkland and removal of secondary access. The following alternatives were determined to have the potential potential to feasibly attain most of the project objectives and reduce significant impacts. Under the no project, no development alternative, the proposed project would not be adopted and the project site would remain in its current condition. Under the no project alternative, the proposed project would not be adopted and no comprehensive planning framework or master developer would guide redevelopment of the project site. Under the partial adaptive reuse of historic district alternative, portions of the existing FDC that contribute to the historic district would be preserved and incorporated into the redevelopment of the project site. The partial adaptive reuse of the historic district alternative was selected as the environmental superior alternative because it would result in similar impacts to the proposed project, but would reduce impacts to historic resources by preserving and reusing portions of the historic district. This concludes the CEQA portion of the presentation, and I will now turn it back over to Melinda to discuss next steps.

Thank you, Jennifer. Some of the next steps involved in the project with Planning Commission meeting this evening, staff is seeking Planning Commission feedback and to receive and file the report. In addition, we will be returning to August 10th Planning Commission meeting with the specific plan. Any comments that we receive this evening would be incorporated into that document. as well as the general plan land use element amendment that needs to be made and zoning code amendments that also need to be made for consistency with the implementation of the specific plan. After the planning commission provides recommendations to city council, the city council would then review those recommendations for consideration for adoption and certification of the EIR. And after that is completed, then we anticipate that the state will be selecting a master developer for a future development of the FDC site and would have to implement and comply with the plan, the specific plan. And that concludes staff's presentation. We're available to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Commissioners, any questions of staff? Commissioner Martinez?

I THINK I'LL WAIT UNTIL AFTER PUBLIC COMMENT AND DO JOINT QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS SINCE IT WILL SKIP AROUND TOO.

OKAY. IS EVERYBODY OKAY WITH THAT FOR NOW? OKAY. GREAT. I'LL NOW OPEN PUBLIC COMMENTS. IF YOU'D LIKE TO SPEAK ON THIS ITEM, PLEASE APPROACH EITHER PODIUM AND IF YOU'RE PARTICIPATING BY ZOOM, PLEASE USE THE RAISE HAND OPTION AND IF YOU'RE PARTICIPATING BY PHONE, PLEASE PRESS STAR 9. To my right, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for having me this evening. My comment is I think I'll agree with a lot of the folks speaking this evening, but one that stuck out to me was actually the medians. They were actually fairly wide with trees that no one will actually be sitting under. Just in terms of, I forget which particular area of the neighborhood, but in terms of usable green space that has utility for the limited acreage, stuffing it between two lanes of the road is just not optimal. That's it.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Planning Commission. Thank you all for having us. Just a couple quick comments. First, I understand that it's not typical to include kind of a non-recurring events in transportation studies. I'd ask at the town hall about why the fair activity was not included in the transportation study and it was said that it was not typical it is also not typical to put a development twice the size of villa park a standalone city in the middle of the city with one road it's also not typical to have a county fair that has 50 000 daily residents uh and to kind of go back to earlier the most impacted people are going to be in the ej communities so we're going to be hitting them very very hard with a lot of traffic impacts and i think it's NOT LEGITIMATE TO NOT ANTICIPATE WHAT THAT'S GOING TO LOOK LIKE BECAUSE WE KNOW IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. I SUSPECT THAT IF YOU DO INCLUDE THAT, THAT THE TRAFFIC FOR THAT MONTH WILL BE SIGNIFICANT AND UNAVOIDABLE. THEN THE OTHER COMMENT I MADE AT THE TOWN HALL THAT I WANTED TO CLARIFY, THERE WAS A QUESTION FROM ONE OF THE COMMENTERS ABOUT HOMES FOR FAMILIES, FOR AFFORDABLE FAMILIES, AND IN PARTICULAR, THIS IS GOING TO BE ABOUT 80 INCHES OF THE ACRE ON AVERAGE. usually a podium construction it's exceptionally expensive so in order to get that property to yield appropriately to be buildable they generally go to studios and one bedrooms and while i understand the eir says single family homes and the developer can do whatever they want the math of that development project simply will not allow it so i think it's important that we be not only factually accurate with what the er the ir says but we also communicate to the the public what the reality is is that there's likely not going to be a lot of family homes and that's fine but we just need to be completely transparent about that and I think we should be looking at the traffic site thank you thank you all right go ahead

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Steve Smith. Thank you for having us here today. I just want to say a couple of things about the Fairview Park Plan. The first one is I think I have many of the concerns and objections that we heard if you were there at the Town Hall the other day is the first one being chiefly is the nature of the ingress and egress to the facility. You know, it's just one road is not the right solution for that. Number two is I think the number of trips that are going to be generated because of this is going to have a bad effect on at least Harbor Boulevard, if not spillover into other kind of neighborhoods and areas. And I think that the thing that stands out to me, though, above all is and I think I don't hear this a comment on quite as much as I'd like to hear it is, is I think we're really going to be chasing this for a long time. And I think that a lot of the objectives that our city has for the city. are going to be undermined by this. Like for example, our city has pursued a number of bike lanes and when this is fully built out, those lanes are going to be, so we're growing the population of our city and we're shrinking the arteries of our city. I'm sorry, and the first thing that's gonna happen is when this plan is complete, people are gonna come forward and they're gonna be just like this right now. This room's gonna be full, other rooms like it, other town halls. And we can avoid that right now if we thoughtfully and carefully consider this plan and make some revisions to it. I know we're a little late for that, but that would be my ideal solution to move forward with this. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi, thank you guys for having us. My name is Brian Emerson. I live in College Park. I'm just here. I just wanted to just say I hope you guys plan this place with the minimum housing of 2,300 homes. We really need open space here. I'm a coach. I coach my kids' sports. My son's 18. My daughter's 13. From the time they were six years old, playing flag football at Jack Hammond. and i'm speaking from the flag football side of it but i know it's impacted every everywhere in the city is we don't have fields we don't have space our kids that need things to do um and we're going to throw all these homes in and there's going to be a whole bunch of people and we're already doing other projects that those people those kids are going to need things to do Our kids today sit on their phones at home with nothing to do. And I feel we're squandering an opportunity here with this land. I mean, it's a really great piece of property to really add some value to the city and create a great community park that can accommodate all these kids. Like flag football, for instance, for females. Female sports is growing huge across the country. More females are playing sports. And it's, so the same amount of females that were, when I was playing, when I first started with my son at Jack Hammett, all boys and we were all filled there. Now we have the same amount of girls that are playing with the boys and We're having a quick, you know, not be able to register teams because it fills up so fast. I just feel we're packing a whole bunch of people in, but we're not accounting for what are we going to do? What are the kids going to do? Like for recreation, we're an unhealthy country. We need kids outside. We need kids playing sports. Like my daughter played rugby this year. Rugby's growing for girls, and we're going to need space. I just hope we can keep the houses low and create an awesome park. We can have pickleball, public pickleball, bocce ball, make it a great place. I moved here 16 years ago, and all my friends... I have now are from flag football in our community. And it just grows community. It gets people out there. I don't think all these people are going to be happy when they get here and their kids don't have anywhere to join sports teams and get involved outside and be in the park. I don't know. I moved here because it's Orange County and it's not LA. I work in LA all the time. There's nothing to do there. There's houses everywhere, but nothing for kids to do. They get into trouble. This place would be perfect right in the center of our city to create a beautiful park for everyone to enjoy, not just housing for a few people. There's a lot of people here that need this space, and I hope we do something and maybe keep it at the minimum and just build a beautiful park. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you. I just wanted to cover a couple items and I would like to dovetail on what everybody else is saying. One issue is there is one way in and one way out and that is a safety concern. And the other thing is public safety. I read the long form of this plan, all 320 pages. And when it came to public services, there's like two small items on law enforcement and fire. And there's three engines within the proximity of Fairview, which is engine one, engine five, and engine four, which, They already have their radiuses that they can only cover, and then they would have to respond to Fairview if you guys build that out. And then on the police, on the law enforcement side, it says they want the Costa Mesa Police Department to cover this new development as well. Well, as we know, that the police department here has already been hit hard, and I think We have a great police department. Don't get me wrong. I love our police department. They have great law enforcement here. We have best law enforcement. I have to agree. But I look, some of these cruisers are already old. They're beaten down. We've already lost our helicopter. I mean, we put a strain on them. So they're going to have to have some sort of department, small department within the Fairview development for the police and for fire, so that's gonna have to be put in there. That was one of the concerns I was thinking of. I think what I'm trying to say is probably if you just sat back and just thought about it a little bit longer, you know, we're building up. Everywhere I look, we're just building up. And it increases population, increases traffic. I live on Orange Avenue. I live at 18th and Orange. And I've watched the traffic increase immensely. Within the last, like, ever since, I guess, the end of COVID, the traffic has increased immensely. And I cannot tell you, and I will, I'll end with this. E-bikes are fun. I guess if I was 12 years old, I'd want an e-bike, too, if I was 13 years old. But we need to have some regulation on that situation, too. We need to take a look at that, too. That's all I got. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is John Trotter, and I live in College Park. I've been in Costa Mesa since 55. I'd like to ask one question of the commission. How many live in Costa Mesa?

We all do.

Okay. Well, that tells me. Okay. So you don't know what. Okay. In College Park, there's 1,000 homes over there.

I'm sorry, just to clarify, we all live in Costa Mesa. Do you? Yes. Okay. Well, nobody answered. Sorry. We don't have a dialogue generally.

I just wanted you to know. That's fine. Okay. Either way, College Park has 1,000 homes over there. Okay. You want to take – and it has 13 exits – from those thousand homes, and you wanna take four times that and have two exits. This is something you guys really need to consider. The issues that you guys have gone through prior to this starting of questioning was about greenhouse gases, which you're gonna create with 4,000 car, with 8,000 cars, because you figure there's two per family. Okay, the safety The risk analysis over there would be tremendous with the traffic. These are things you need to consider. Nothing is set in stone yet. It's up to you. Make it right.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Diane Russell. First of all, I'd like to express my appreciation to the staff for holding the forum. They answered every question that people had for over two hours, listened to people's concerns, and I think it was a really good experience. I support the specific plan as it gives a developer a framework to design a neighborhood that will be of value to the Costa Mesa community and future residents. I'm focusing on the affordable portion of the development. It's going to be designed and developed over about 20 years. Times change. Planning commissioners change. City councils change. One thing that I do not believe will change is the need for affordable housing. I've been in the city for over 25 years involved with affordable housing and advocating for it. And we needed it then. We need it now. We're going to need it in the future. What they ask from our perspective is that as we're moving forward and you're working with the developer to create some kind of a mechanism in the development agreement that ensures that the affordable housing is built, if not simultaneously with the market rate, that it's built in tandem with it. I would hate in 20 years from now that we built all the market rate and for us to have never built any of the affordable. Times change. I would not like the developer to be in a situation where they'd say, oops, we can't make it pencil out anymore. Sorry. And we don't get any affordable housing. Anyway, thanks to the city. And we look forward to seeing how this develops.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Gary Bennett. I live in Mesa Del Mar. I've been here since 1985. And just have some comments and questions. I'm wondering, has the city considered the loss of income from shutting down Mesa Linda Golf Course for the length of time it would take to rebuild or redesign it? And has the city considered the six to eight local high schools that use Costa Mesa Country Club for golf practice and tournaments, where would they relocate to? We have several private country clubs that I am doubting would accommodate those high schools. Those golf teams would be homeless for however long that rebuild or redesign takes. As far as the golf course is concerned itself, reducing the yardage of the golf course would reduce the quality of the course substantially, which may mean a loss of revenue. And there would be, you know, that would go along with, you know, people wouldn't be as attracted to our golf course if it was a substandard golf course. As I understand it, I think that it was stated that the state has entered into an agreement with Village Apartments. I believe that was stated tonight in your presentation. And if that is the case, this development is going to be a part of our city, Costa Mesa, is it not? Are we not going to provide services, fire, police, trash, etc if so and if this project is in our city and incorporated into our city merrimack is now a part of our city and if that is the case if the city has merrimack merrimack could be used as the access road because it is the city's street now it's not the states So I'm hoping that the Planning Commission will deeply consider that and go into negotiations with our state and negotiate Merrimack as the through street and not cut into the golf course and cut down on our recreational property that we have so little of. Thank you, appreciate it.

Good evening. My name is Wendy Lise. I've lived here since 1972 and I'm going to tag on something that he brought up, local control. As a longtime resident, I am angry that the state has imposed their will on us. I've been going to these meetings and several other people have too. For almost three years we didn't want the EOC here. Well, we lost that one But now I want to talk to you about your responsibility and recommendation to the City Council I read I did not read every word in the EIR But what concerns me, and I did ask this question last week at the town hall, is the issue that was just on there with the insignificant and unavoidable impacts and how they cannot be mitigated. And the air quality, the biological resources, that bothers me that they can't be mitigated and we are going to plan to build this city within our city. Well, that's wrong. I believe that it's morally wrong to consent and to move ahead with this project when there are gonna be impacts to the environment that are gonna affect our quality of life, the traffic, is going to be horrendous on on harbor i would support the 2300 units i think that that's reasonable and i like the wonderful idea of a park for our young people if you've ever been to tulsa i went there recently there's a gathering place in tulsa where they have a wonderful park that we could have more park space for our young people. Finally, as you consider our comments, I did write an eight page letter to submit regarding the EIR. You do have alternatives to recommend to the city council, and it's in the EIR, that it gives the city a way out by acknowledging that the project proposed in the DEIR could not go forward unless a general plan and zoning codes are amended. They do not have to approve the specific And it mentioned that, that there would be a reduced project scope that would have less impact on the future of Costa Mesa and would be a win for our city and still comply with arena obligations. So I know you have a heavy responsibility, but please think of us who live here and the future that we want to see Costa Mesa without.

Thank you.

Hello. I'm a longtime resident of the west side of Costa Mesa. And unfortunately for Costa Mesa, we're in a challenging situation when it comes to traffic and housing because the adjacent cities of Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, as you know, we're a cut-through city. When I've lived there, I've cut through Costa Mesa when I've lived in Costa Mesa. So as they're working to bring up their numbers, that's going to hit us pretty hard. So You know, when I saw at the presentation the other day that, you know, we're essentially bringing Harbor Boulevard down to gridlock, as well as Placentia and Victoria, it seems like that's a big burden for us to bear at 4,000 units. So I think we need to exercise some restraint there. And then that impacts emergency services, right? They were talking about making sure that we've got emergency services available to the new site. However, those of us who are waiting for the ambulance where those significant impacts are, good luck to us. Maybe they'll get there. Maybe they won't. We hope we can have our emergencies during non-peak rush hour times. I guess that's the solution. So that's a problem. The other thing I have a big concern about is this is going to be a huge project no matter what the number is. But 4,000, I have to wonder what else we're not going to get in the other areas of the city. This is going to consume the resources of the city. I think it was like 30 pot shops, and we were having challenges getting those to the queue. So we have other needs in the city. I live on the west side. We have two areas that have flooded for decades. decades. We all know where they are on the west side. Any chance we'll be getting any help on that? Meanwhile, you know, we've got an area that that will be not a concern to them. So, you know, you got to think of those of us who've been, you know, through it with you. And we've been here and we deserve better, quite frankly. So I urge you to scale it back and get us to something that's reasonable. We all want affordable housing. That's not an issue. We're a kind and generous community. Just scale it back and give us a chance. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Last call for anybody else in chambers?

Okay.

Ms. Green, do we have anybody on Zoom and phone?

Yes. Natalie, please.

Go ahead, Natalie.

Natalie, please unmute yourself.

I didn't realize I had to hit unmute twice. Thanks for the opportunity, y'all. I was there in the chambers earlier, but I had to get home to my nine-year-old daughter. Couldn't wait on that power outage to come back up. So I have a lot to say. I live in the Mesa Del Mar neighborhood. I grew up in Costa Mesa. My grandparents bought here in the 1950s in the Hellcrest neighborhood. I grew up in Hellcrest. My heart is in Costa Mesa. I have been going to all the workshops. I have been very vocal about how many people live in Mesa Del Mar and how many people should live in the FDC property. I live in Mesa Del Mar. We have five exits in Mesa Del Mar. There's about 2,630 units. We are comprised of single family. We have our duplexes near Mendoza Drive. And now the duplexes are now having ADUs built on them, which was the nice little green space that the families could have their kids play in the parkway. But now they can't do that. So now they go to the team and go park whenever they can or the additional parks in the area. So what I am proposing and what I think our specific plan should actually have, I know we need to have housing. I really think we need to have a specific plan. And I think we should have mixed single family. We should continue with the great communities we have like College Park, Hellcrest, Mesa Del Mar, and create that single family home around the golf course. you would be able to sell those homes for a good amount of money. And then within that community, we could have affordable housing. We could have a carved out pathway down Shelley Drive that hits you to Golf Course Drive. they could bike and walk to the golf course. Seniors could live in this property. It would be beautiful for our community. My dad grew up here. He went to Costa Mesa High School and he lived in Mesa Verde. He never had an opportunity to buy a home here. And he ended up moving. I had to move him to Garden Grove because the rent here for a one bedroom is now approaching two thousand nine hundred dollars for a 72 year old. My dad still comes here three days a week to the Costa Mesa golf course. So I just know we can make this community vibrant like it's always been. I really hope you guys can serve the residents here. We have been very vocal about how we feel and the traffic. Lastly, the two exits you have coming out on Harbor Boulevard, they are 0.3 miles apart. And we all know Harbor Boulevard is packed. I hardly go down to Harbor Boulevard unless I need to get to Northgate or Home Depot. I avoid it. I avoid Wilson Drive. I avoid Harbor. I take Placentia to Adams. So just please listen to the residents here. We need the green space. We need the sports fields. All the fields are locked up for our children.

All right. Thank you.

The next speaker is Kathy.

Hello, this is Kathy Esfahani with the Costa Mesa Affordable Housing Coalition. I have been a lifelong resident of Costa Mesa, and I am tremendously in support of this plan for up to 4,000 units at the Fairview Developmental Center. As you know, affordable housing is a tremendous need in the community. Thousands and thousands of families pay too much for rent. And the stress of being barely able to afford your rent hurts parents, hurts children, it hurts our community. So by building a significant amount of affordable housing at this site, we will be meeting a really pressing community need. I know that there are concerns about traffic. I know there are concerns about sufficient playing fields for our kids. And all of that matters. But I think that there are solutions that the city should consider. So for example, with traffic, I think we should be really creative in coming up with things like free trolleys so that people can take trolleys to South Coast Plaza or Newport Boulevard or the beach. So that way they don't need to get in their cars. And if we have more bike lanes and make them safe so that people are encouraged to ride bikes and walk, we can get people out of their cars and ease the traffic issues. And in terms of playing fields, let's have dual use agreements with all of the schools so that kids can play in the fields in the elementary schools, which are not being used after school, and really boost the recreation departments and activities there. So anyway, I thank the staff for all the work they've done on this, and I hope that you approve the proposed specific plan with all of the affordable housing in it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Forrest.

Yes, hello. Forrest Flaherty and we have a Cornerstone on Cornerstone Lane. We have 37 homes in our community which exits right on Fair Drive. And we haven't heard of a resolution of how we're not going to be landlocked in our community trying to exit at prime time in the morning and the afternoon to get to places when we're already getting landlocked with just minimum construction going on right now in the fair development community. and there's no plans to put in a stop sign before our place so we can exit left to Fair Drive so we can get onto Harbor Blvd. And we haven't heard anything about that. The other concern is you guys presented with all this green space and everything else and gave us all these options for everything and it looked like the majority of the community wanted more green space and more parks and you guys presented baseball fields and everything else and all of a sudden you guys do a 360 and try to cram all these homes in this small area that's just going to impact Costa Mesa tremendously with traffic and congestion and everything else.

Thank you. Thank you.

Cynthia, please.

Good evening, Commissioner. Cynthia McDonald, Costa Mesa resident. We, the residents, thought this was going to be the solution to all our problems of affordable housing and open space, but what we're seeing here is the opposite. When the number of units was increased to 4,000, the number of affordable units stayed the same, and the market rate units increased. I understand this would make it more appealing to a master developer, but it doesn't solve our affordability problem. It doesn't solve the open space problem because it doesn't provide the space. In-lieu fees won't buy more space because the City has not identified a parcel to purchase. How will the City cope with the stress on our other parks because it doesn't provide space here? where is the planning where is the smart growth a smart growth approach approach utilizes five key principles building connected communities this is not connected makes transportation accessible it's not accessible there's no public transport that's going into this Development. Build for everybody. Well, you're not building for everybody. You're building for a few. Community voice. Give the people a say in what they want built in their own neighborhoods. Well, we didn't get that, did we? And investing in Main Street. This project, combined with Measure K rezoning, is going to add 61,498 residents to our city. That is a 55% increase over time. How is the city going to take care of these people? It's not just police and fire, but when you get to a certain point, you're going to need a hospital and you're going to need more schools. You need to plan a better plan than this to keep Costa Mesa healthy, whether it's financially or physically or mentally. Thank you.

Thank you.

No further speakers.

Okay, I will now close public comments.

Commissioners, any questions of staff or you wanna offer your comments at this point?

Yeah, I might answer. Go ahead, Commissioner Martinez. You might cover all of our comments.

Yeah.

Really?

Let me go. Okay.

Yeah, mine, because mine just does not work. Okay, so I'll use the director's, thank you. Okay, I'll get started, big picture, and then I'll actually go into the plan. So first, in the plan, somewhere in there, it says that amendments are needed to the land use, circulation, and housing elements. So I saw provided amendments to the land use element. What about circulation and housing?

The housing element does not need to be amended at this time since the project is anticipating at least the minimum 2300 residential units included. The only update we would make to the housing element potentially would be to increase the market rate above moderate housing units that are in the plan, but that's not necessarily required to meet our arena goals and allocations in the other categories.

Okay, so maybe we get rid of that sentence because apparently it's not accurate.

Yeah, it's no longer needed. I think at one point when we released the draft specific plan, there was a contemplation of including additional units for the FTC site. We don't need to do that. We have enough sites identified to meet RHNA and buffer capacity. Can you just note what section that is that you saw that?

I think it's on page 2-4. Thank you. Yeah, I'm also working with a bit of an older copy, but I think that's what I have it on. Okay, so, aha, my microphone works now, thank you. So we're also doing this general plan, this zoning code amendment. And for the land use category that Fairview Developmental Center is in, we just take away a land use category. It doesn't have one. And then for the zoning code, we also just take away its zoning. It doesn't have a base zoning. Is that typical? Is that standard? That it just doesn't have a base zoning?

it does it refers to the specific plan so the specific plan acts as the general plan designation and the zoning code requirements and that is very typical of a specific plan and will our other specific plans also have their base as specific plan or is it just this one that's going to have that so one of the things that we're doing as part of the general plan update is identifying the specific plans in the general plan to kind of correct that on the general plan side but Our specific plans in Costa Mesa act as overlays. So they can't, unless we rehaul the specific plan, it can't be adopted in the same way. So at a high level, we're doing it right for FTC. And as we have opportunity in the future for other specific plans, they'll follow suit in the same pattern.

OK. In our plan, we say that if there's conflicts with the municipal code, then the plan holds superior. But if there's no base zoning, then I would assume there's no conflict with municipal code?

Relation to zoning there wouldn't be a conflict because a specific plan takes over that requirement However for let's say landscaping if there's requirements that are in the code that aren't necessarily in the specific plan And that's when the municipal code would take over got it.

Okay That's that should cover all the general stuff land use so I don't think we talked much about the EOC, and I want to give just an opportunity to talk about how has the Emergency Operations Center constrained us, not helped us out while we were making this plan, and what limitations were involved while doing this because of the EOC.

I'm just going to go back to the very first map iteration that shows the size of the FTC when it was originally being contemplated here. Um, as you can see, there was a lot more space available for the specific plan. However, that was reduced over time with the removal of the property on Merrimack and the Mark Lane homes, which are already developed. And then the EOC also took away 15 additional acres available in the plan. And then the city had also learned through the process that DDS would still retain 15 acres of the remaining 95.

Yeah, so all of that land, like the plan we have now fits, you know, these 4,000 units, but because of the EOC, that EOC area can't be like a park. It has to be EOC. Okay, let's talk about land uses. So in a few different parts of the plan, we talk about allowing standalone commercial. So my question is just why? Why have standalone be allowed? Why not make sure that everything is in mixed use buildings so that we are maximizing space?

Short answer is flexibility, horizontal mixed use, and just giving the master developer the opportunity to do commercial in a way that is most suitable for the specific plan. So one example is you might have a restaurant and you want to do outdoor seating around it. It's a little bit easier to do that in a standalone configuration than it might be in a mixed use. Not impossible. It might just be easier. And so we want to retain some flexibility so we can see some creative options.

Okay. The size. It's capped at 35,000 square feet total for commercial. If we want to do flexibility, why are we capping the total amount of commercial?

Yeah, so 35,000 was based on a market study. It actually identified that really somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 was most appropriate for a plan of this size and for the number of housing units that we're contemplating. So we're giving a little bit more flexibility than what was identified in the market research, but really it doesn't identify any more than that that can be supported. So it's more of a right-sizing, I guess.

Yes. But, like, if they came to us and they said, actually, we think that 50,000 square feet would be supported just by the people who live here, then, like, we're capping that. So what would be, I guess, the process to uncap it later on or why have this cap now from the beginning?

So the cap is included in the specific plan, as Ana mentioned. It's a little bit greater than what the market study had indicated. However, if a future master developer wanted to do more than that, then a specific plan amendment would need to be initiated to update the document, as well as any subsequent environmental analysis, because we only studied up to 35,000.

And specific plan amendment is us, or is it...

THE MASTER DEVELOPER WOULD HAVE TO INITIATE.

WHAT LEVEL OF REVIEW? DOES IT GO TO US?

THE AMENDMENT WOULD GO THROUGH PLANNING COMMISSION AND CITY COUNCIL.

AND CITY COUNCIL. OKAY. We have a use table in the specific plan. It has a lot of different uses. We just did a zoning code amendment about making sure that we don't say as many uses. So just general comment. Let's not be so overly specific. I saw one thing in there about ice cream shop. It's like, OK, but what about Italian ice? What about Froyo? Does this count as ice cream? We're getting into the let's just have general land use things just like we did for our big zoning code amendment that we just did. Okay. Drive-throughs prohibited, good, very good, thank you. Still in the land use table, and I think this is page 413, there's a Y in there, the letter Y. And I don't know what the letter Y means because it's not defined. I'm assuming it means yes. But also, let's make sure we change that to something that's actually defined. Could you clarify?

It should be a P. We can make that update.

A P for permitted? Thank you. OK. OK. Um, outdoor dining. Love that. Um, we still prohibit it in within the parking areas. That's something I don't love. Um, we should consider just allowing outdoor dining. We want people to experience, uh, all of that. Okay. Uh, that should cover all the land use stuff. Housing. Um, The language in here says that the development shall include both rental and ownership. I mean just on this maximum flexibility like, kick like is it is it a shall that there will be ownership or do we want that to be a may so that they can decide if it's you know maybe it's going to be all condos maybe it's going to be all apartments um is there a reason we do a shall um it was tried to try to respond to planning commission and city council comments that we received to try to incorporate and incentivize home ownership opportunities Okay. Income categories. So this is, we define very low income. Zero to 50% AMI, that makes sense to me. But then in a different table, we also reference extremely low income. which would be a subset of very low income. I just want to make sure that our references are all the same. Let's like not use extremely low income. Let's just use stick to the very low income since that's the only thing that we're going to be using.

Statute has added extremely low as a requirement in the future. So we want to make sure we capture that. And that is a reporting requirement that we have to do in our annual progress reports.

Okay. Hmm. All right. Something I'd like to confirm with, I think this is on page four or five, talking about the number of units. I'm just working off my notes. For any density bonus that's calculated for the site, is that as, IS THAT CALCULATED PROJECT WIDE OR IS THAT CALCULATED ON A BUILDING BY BUILDING BASIS?

IF A DEVELOPER WERE TO USE STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW IT WOULD BE CALCULATED OFF OF MINIMUM DENSITY IF THERE IS ONE IN THE PLAN. THERE IS IN THIS CASE SO IT WOULD BE CALCULATED OFF OF 2300 UNITS FOR THE PURPOSES OF DETERMINING BONUS, CONCESSIONS, WAIVERS.

SO IT WOULD BE CALCULATED OFF THE 2300?

Similar to the project that we saw earlier tonight, the 15-unit project, it was calculated off of the 20 dwelling units per acre because that was the minimum, even though that site allows up to 50 dwelling units per acre.

I see. Okay. Interesting.

Sorry, that's a state law requirement, just to clarify.

Yeah. I'm going to have to make a note of that and look into it. OK, development standards, building heights, height limits, and also FAR. So first let me ask about FAR, because we have a table in here that regulates what our floor area ratios are going to be. And I'm wondering what this means in the context, because it also doesn't have some definitions. So I'm assuming that floor area ratio is referring just to commercial. Am I accurate in that? Okay, let's make sure we have that in there because I don't think it says that anywhere. Um, so there's a 0.4 FAR for commercial, but then it's also a 0.25 FAR for mixed use. So we're saying that if you have this, this, you know, big building, only a quarter of the ground floor can be used for commercial. You can't have an entire, let's say street frontage be commercial. Why is that? an entire like half of a building of the ground floor i mean you you could have the entire street frontage depending on how it's oriented so well we're still limiting like the if a building is using up the entire an entire parcel the entire ground floor can't be commercial like it can only be a quarter of it yeah that's correct that's to um anticipate for

residential entrances, elevator shaft, lobby areas, mail rooms, all the other things with residential uses that would need to typically be accommodated on the first floor.

But is that going to take up 75% of the ground floor space? It could, but also we're on this flexibility thing, right? We want to make sure that if a developer wants to take up 50% of the ground floor with a target. When I went to USC, I lived on top of a target in a Trader Joe's that took up basically 95% of the ground floor of the building I was in. And what we're saying here is no, actually, you can't do that. All you're going to get is just a quarter. So it'd be good to have some flexibility. Okay.

Can I, can I respond to that commissioner Martinez? Um, the specific plan does have a ability to make modifications, minor modifications, like in the current municipal code regarding some of the standards, they just have to make an application and go through the process to request a deviation, um, from what's identified. And it's a staff level of review and approval.

Staff level or staff level?

Do we know? It's with the director.

Director. Thank you.

OK. Sorry, the clarification is that it wouldn't be a specific plan amendment to do that.

Got it. OK. Height limits. Why are we limiting DDS housing specifically to 50 feet? I know that's like DDS's typical building type is a 50-foot building. But is that what they asked for? Is that...

I THINK THEY WOULD HAVE THE ABILITY TO UTILIZE ANY FORM OF STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW WAIVERS TO ADJUST AS THEY WOULD NEED TO. OKAY.

So EOC has a radio tower. And that needs a line of sight to two different mountains, which limits the height along certain corridors of the plan. Is there a way that we can just encourage the parks to be placed at the closer edge of those corridors so that they're not as affected by the height limits? Or are we, again, just relying on the developer to be like, okay, we're going to put it where they want to. And if it just so happens to be there to allow for a bigger height, then good for them.

As I think we mentioned, there's flexibility on where the open space can actually be placed. The only items within the specific plan that have specific requirements for them to remain where they're shown is like the backbone roadway infrastructure, but everything else is flexible and where its final location can be identified.

Okay. Sticking with land use, setbacks. So when we updated our zoning code regulations recently for the mood, we kept some five foot setbacks And to my understanding, and also to Council Member Reynolds' understanding, Those setbacks were basically because we don't have a set minimum sidewalk width in this city. It'll deviate throughout the city, so it's possible that a mood development would be placed somewhere there's a four-foot sidewalk. But here, this is an entirely new development. We're doing entirely new sidewalks, and from the mobility chapter, it looks like all the sidewalks are going to be eight feet. So with that in mind and knowing that we're going to have these wide sidewalks, why require the setbacks that we require if it's not the case as in other parts of the city where we'll have smaller sidewalks?

The sidewalk widths were identified at that size based on city's design standards for streets. That doesn't necessarily mean that the setbacks could be reduced to less than 10. However, the setbacks can be used for open space areas on the development that's publicly accessible.

I mean, it's not that they can't be used. It's not that. I mean, we also have maximums in here. But why not also allow a development to reach the sidewalk instead of also having that five foot setback?

It is the place where the front of the lot can provide shade trees for the sidewalk. So that's the thinking. We're not requiring parkways as part of the sidewalk or roadway system, and that's typically where you would have a street tree to provide shade. Instead, what we're suggesting is that happens within the setback area, and therefore the planting is also getting watered.

I will have comments on the lack of parkways once I get to mobility instead of just land use. But yeah, then you're just putting a tree right up against the building, and you're not able to perhaps appreciate the full building if the trees were in a parkway. OK. Building, design, massing and step backs and variation. I don't know. Whenever I see this, and I'm sure I'm going to see it later when we do our design guidelines, I'm like, what are we? Why are we requiring that the building go in and have this little thing, and we require this kind of massing variation? If I just picture Paris, a Paris Boulevard, am I going to see these indentations in all these buildings? No, I'm not. I'm going to see a straight frontage for this building, and it's going to have ornamentation, and it's going to look nice. To the extent that we want our buildings to look nice, yes, of course. We want this area to be pretty. But I don't want us to require all this stuff. To just make the buildings pretty if it's just a straight wall, but it has ornamentation at the top, a very nice facade that's just a straight wall, I think that would be fine with me. Okay, building orientation, I think it's great that we're saying that buildings have to face the paseos, the parks, don't not face the private driveways, not face the parking, don't like face the back, that's good, very good. Okay, we have a couple of questions. corner locations, forgetting what the figure is, but we say these three corners are going to have special corner features. I think you guys know what I'm referring to. But are we saying that those are the three corners that will have these corner features, or is that one also another one where there's flexibility? Because that was a bit unclear.

Those were identified as key intersections, but there can be flexibility in where those final locations are right now. They're kind of tied in central to where the mixed use is on the land use plan.

Okay. Do we, do we say that in the plan that like there is flexibility as to where these key intersections are?

We can incorporate some of that language. Thank you. Okay.

We get to chapter five, transportation, complete streets, which you can imagine will be a favorite of mine. Okay, I'll start with one of the goals that's listed at the very top of the chapter is to reduce speeding by reducing lane width. So that's, I think, note number six in 5.2, if I'm remembering this accurately. So I just want that first said because I think that's a great goal. We don't want to encourage dangerous driving, obviously. And then I get to our street sections that we propose and I realize, oh wait, we have ignored this number six that we put in here. So just going through this, figure five dash four has 12 foot lanes. A 12 foot lane is what you put on a freeway. So we're saying, okay, we're gonna have the same lane width as we do on a freeway. And if this is the right one, I think this is the promenade. It also has a shoulder, which doesn't specify if it's also for parking. I'm assuming that shoulder is for parking. Is that accurate? Yes, it is, okay. But it's still a 12-foot lane, which is a freeway lane. Let's make sure that we don't have freeway lanes on a city street.

We still have to make sure that fire apparatus can travel down the promenade and out. So it's most likely a requirement for that.

I'm sure the fire department is able to travel along a lane that is built for a city street. It's the same in figure 5-5, 5-7, 5-8, 5-9. There's 12-foot lanes. There's freeway lanes across this entire plan. the quieter a street is gonna be, it also means the less space there's going to be for parks, for housing, for other things that we would like. I was looking at the EIR, and the right-of-way acreage for the plan is, it said 21 acres. 21 acres of right of way. This is 21 acres of asphalt, essentially. What if we had less so that we could have more park? I think that would be a good goal. We're going to have 50% more street than we do park. I think that's backwards. So if we narrow our lanes, we're going to be able to accomplish that. OK. Page 5-2. I think I wrote the order. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists. We want to make sure we want to keep our people safe. So we're going to go in that order. Okay. Bike facilities. We're proposing class three bikeways in some of our local roads. This is an entirely new development. We have the chance to not have class three facilities, which are just on street bikeways with a sharrow. We have the chance to not have people riding their bikes go, you know, the 10, 15 miles per hour that they go with a car that's trying to go 25 miles per hour behind them. Let's try and avoid the Class 3 facilities. So that covers Class 3. Figure 5.13 says CAS 3, if we can correct the spelling there. Okay. Paseos and our Backbone Road Network. Is the intent of the roads to go through the Paseo or to dead end at the Paseo?

To connect to the Paseo, yes.

So it'll like go through?

Well, there will be private drives going into the GDS housing, but the public road system supporting the project will basically begin with the promenade and then be filtrated all the way through the project.

Can you pull up the Backbone Road Network on the side? So you see how that middle backbone road has a break in the Paseo? I'm asking, is that a dead end, or is that going through?

It'll be through. It's going through. It'll require a crosswalk.

Got it. Got it. OK. So to the extent that that's an intersection with the Paseo, let's make it a raised intersection, pedestrian first space, like that. OK. Throughout the document, it says the one Paseo. And the one Paseo is going to be here. And we're going to do this. Flexibility. Let's let them make more than one. The one or more Paseos. If they want to make one of these other orange roads a Paseo, they should be free to do so. OK. Transit. I think very important since we're trying to lessen the amount of people who are going to be driving here. That is also one of the goals that's in here. Figure 516, missing some bus stops that are already existing that are at Harbor and Fair and at Harbor and where the secondary access road is gonna go. So let's make sure that we recognize that those bus stops do exist, that people will be able to walk to them. It's also missing in the DEIR. So I wanna make sure that that gets included once we do the final. And I think DEIR might also be missing bus route 55. So just make sure that we have, we encompass all the different public transit opportunities that are available, that will be available to people who live here. Okay. The parking section. I'll just first start nice. And then I'll go to the bicycle parking bit at the bottom. Building code is where I get lost a little bit. So I just want to ask, are new buildings required to follow the green building code? Yes, okay, so the green building code has bike parking requirements now with the new update, which are more stringent than what we currently have in our bike parking section in here. So if buildings are gonna have to match the green building code anyway, let's just put the bike parking requirements of the green building code. which for residential short-term, one space per 10,000 square feet, and for long-term, it's one bike space per two dwelling units is what I'm seeing. But also I know sometimes building codes are locked behind a paywall, so if someone can actually verify that.

Yeah, and I can just speak to that quickly as well. Typically, because building codes update every three years, we find that for zoning documents, we can typically put a reference that it should follow whatever the building code requirement is because they update so fast that if we put an actual number WE WOULD BE IN CONFLICT. I GUARANTEE YOU IN ONE CYCLE. WE CAN CERTAINLY PUT THAT DOWN.

WE HAD THAT CONVERSATION INTERNALLY AND CAME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION AND WE'RE LIKE WE SHOULD JUST REFER TO THE GREEN CODE. I'M SURPRISED TO SEE THAT HASN'T BEEN UPDATED. IT MUST HAVE BEEN AN ERROR AND OUR PART WILL TAKE CARE OF IT.

Got it. And also on parking, the DEIR parking table is still the old one. So we can update it to the new one and whatever the new bike parking one refers to. Okay. Parks. I mean... Of course, we all want more open space and more park space. I think the thing is just where to find it. We can reduce our street widths, and that'll get us some space. But the bulk of this land is going to be housing. So to the extent that we want to let this future developer double the height limit so they can put double the parks, then if park space is what we're after, then maybe that's what we have to do. And keep the same number of units. But that's just one way to accomplish that. There's also parking requirements for our parks and our open spaces that are spelled out in here. And it does say 30 parking spaces for a field, which I'm assuming 30 parking spaces is about the size of a field. So if we want to have more park space, then perhaps we're going to need to sacrifice some parking space. Because I know on-street parking can count, but it is still a trade-off because on-street parking is still also taking up that space. Okay. I see that there's a requirement for a police substation. It does say required in the specific plan text. Fine. I just want to make sure that that's allowed like on the first floor of a mixed use building. Yes, thank you. The fire EMS section is just titled fire. There's no mention of emergency medical services, even though there are vastly more EMS calls than there are fires. So I just want to make sure that there's some kind of mention of EMS for the site. In the who will own infrastructure section, It says that they're gonna build the new water system, they're gonna build a new sewer system, it will be owned by Mesa Water and Costa Mesa Sanitary, but it will be maintained by the city. Why is that?

I think our implementation table is updated to say that that would be the private developer, so there might be a clarification in the text that we need to make sure is captured.

OK. So let's just, when we come back, make sure whoever owns the infrastructure either they're the one who manages it and takes care of it or it's the developer themself. I also wanted to ask about the parks. Are the parks going to stay privately owned or are they going to come over into the city?

So if there's parks that are dedicated to the city, then we would have to accept them and then take them into the city. we do have a note on table A-4 to include city as the ownership option. And then that's also where the sewer system and storm water system are also, and the water system are also noted as being either private or water district or the sanitation district.

Got it. Okay. Um, Back to the DEIR. And then there were some comments from Caltrans that I was actually like kind of surprised by how good they were. They requested some like safe and complete streets improvements that I don't think I saw in either the DEIR or in the plan. And it was things like what I mentioned, like race crosswalks or like more visible crosswalks. And I wanted to see if there was a reason that wasn't included.

I just think at this level of specificity for a specific plan, it wasn't required.

I mean, the specific plan also requires that we put in flat cameras at both the entrances, which is kind of specific. So I don't know why we also wouldn't be looking at this kind of infrastructure improvement.

It's something that can be included.

Okay.

Yeah, I will say, too, we're wrapping up the final EIR, so all the comments received do have responses to them. In some cases, they were warranted. They do include text revisions to the specific plan or the EIR. So I need to go back and check, because there were some comments that came out of that letter that we did actually make updates to the specific plan to accommodate. You haven't seen them yet? It's not public. information quite yet, but to come before we get back to you on the 10th.

Got it. OK. And hopefully last one. With the transportation study, Appendix J.2 of the DEIR, I just want to confirm that the LOS analysis was conducted based on not just this project happening, but also citywide rezoning and housing element implementation. So any of the impacts aren't fully attributable to this project only, is that correct?

Yeah, so Farron Piers is on both the DUDEC team that did the climate action plan, as well as this team doing the EIR for the FDC. And so we coordinated with the DUDEC team to get the housing element land use. And that was incorporated in all three environmental documents. We built the model and then that same model was used for all three documents. So they're all directly consistent with the cumulative year that assumes THE FULL IMPLEMENTATION BUILDOUT OF THE HOUSING ELEMENT AND THAT INCLUDES THE 4,000 UNITS ON THIS SITE AND SOMEONE ASKED THAT EARLIER AND SO JUST TO CLARIFY, THE CAP DOES INCLUDE THE 4,000 UNITS FOR THE FDC AND The with project scenario for this project does include the full build-out of the housing element. But before I clarify that, it's not just the full build-out, it's the expected reasonable build-out of the housing element by year 2045, which the housing element has more opportunity for further growth.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Commissioner Martinez, I wanted to ask Paul Martin to come up and speak on the street widths in the plan. He has some information about fire access needs for those.

While Paul's making his way, commissioners, do you have any other questions or has Commissioner Martinez covered it for everyone? Hold on, let me get you set up there, Paul.

Hi, everyone. Paul Martin, Transportation Services Manager. I was trying to hide out and back and let Paul Herman from Farron Piers handle it. He's covered the ground pretty well. But there was a specific question about the discussion with the width of the roadways. And our most immediate response is fire department has a fire code that requires a 20 foot clear width between raised curb edges. So that went into the design specifically for the promenade. So there's a width that shows a 12 foot lane and a eight foot shoulder. It actually is broad as a shoulder because then it could be for multiple things. Maybe a ride hail service or a loading zone for trucks or for a handicap access if needed. There's just kind of this broad reach of needs for curb access that we've seen in the transportation industry. But that would be more short term typically. And the fire department really wants to see that 20 foot clear. It is state fire code. So that comes up a lot when we're working on our design with the fire department. So you'll see, for example, the local street cross section, maybe it's just two 12 foot or two 11 foot lanes with no median or anything separating them. And then that provides the 20 foot clear width. So It's not just the width of the fire truck being 10, maybe 11 feet, but the 20 foot requirement that generally is assumed to be based on a motorist that pulls to the side and a fire truck or ambulance can go around or a fire truck ambulance pulls to the curb face and a second one can also get around so that degree of agility is required by the fire department and the fire code so we've been working so much with them in our transportation projects that we knew that really need to be integrated into the promenade design so that we didn't have a feasibility concern or issue in the future So that I think was a key thing that Melinda and I were talking, we just wanted to make sure to voice and it's helpful for the planning commission and the community to really understand that 20 foot requirement. 20 feet actually is required for a certain height up to like two or three story buildings. And it actually may need to go up to 24 feet when you have a higher building. So that may add to the requirements depending on building heights. So the fire code starts to I'm a traffic engineer But I've had to learn a lot more about the fire requirements and how it really influences our designs and our projects in something like this where it's a Blank slate rather than I was just retrofitting a roadway within the city is most of the time we're doing Okay Thanks All right commissioners any questions I

Sure, go ahead Commissioner Andrade.

Page four of the staff report, just the, I know that we're leaning towards concept three. What do you feel, I mean the, what is the feasibility, the likelihood that the total cash flow and annual internal rate of return is as close AS IT POSSIBLY CAN FORECAST TO REALITY.

AT THE TIME THAT THE FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS WAS DONE, THAT WAS WHAT THE INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN HAD IDENTIFIED. IF THE PLANNING COMMISSION STILL WANTS TO MOVE FORWARD AT THE 4,000, THAT FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS WAS DONE WITHIN THE LAST YEAR OR TWO.

Okay. So there has been close evaluation, data review and analysis in order to give us that forecast outlining Concept 3 as the best opportunity. I think another thing that I would like to take into highlight actually as a comment is, you know, along the characteristics and specifics of Concept 3, WAS REALLY IMPRESSED WITH OR EVEN THE PROSPECT THAT IN THIS PROJECT, IN THIS DEVELOPMENT, WE COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE 841 UNITS FOR OWNERSHIP, RIGHT? IS THAT ACCURATE? OF JUST, YOU KNOW, THIS IS A COMBINATION. I'M LOOKING AT, SORRY, I'M LOOKING AT PAGE 359. THESE ARE THE KIND OF THE LONG SHEETS. So that is, you know, I feel like that was amazing. Again, forecasting opportunities. I know that there's gonna be mixed income opportunities. All of these won't be affordable unless, I don't know if out of the affordability percentages that you have, how many of these four ownership opportunities, whether it's the apartments or the town homes, are actually within the affordable window.

Sorry, Commissioner Andrade, just trying to understand the question. So the financial feasibility that was conducted, it gives some examples. So it's not to say that this needs to be the level of ownership. What is required is the number of affordable housing units, and that's contemplated in the financial feasibility. I just wanted to clarify before, the financial feasibility determines anywhere between $3,450 and up to $4,000. financially feasible so anything in that range as far as the financial feasibility is determined could be feasible and it did include pretty detailed discussions with our other departments including fire police services all the things that we needed to mitigate so that is reflected in those final internal rate of returns so there is some flexibility for example at concept to the 3450 some tweaks in the number of ownership units versus rental or the size of the units, that could shift the financial feasibility there. So that's why we kind of say it's that break even point. It could even potentially be lower than that if a developer includes more ownership units, for example, or is strategic about where those ownerships are located. Like they would be more expensive closer to the golf course where there's a view, for example. That's why we give you the best snapshot we can, but there's tweaks that could be accommodated in there to make a project feasible in different ways.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I think, again, just understanding that this is a forecast and the best estimate based on the information available now, and this project will take decades in the making. But I think something that, again, stands out based on some of the public comments that we had is, right, the need for continuing to develop in respond to our growing city, uh, for the future of Costa Mesa. So knowing that there's potentially close to a thousand units that could be for ownership for individuals and it's mixed in with lots of rental, um, supporting the community, um, opportunity for, um, I think there was a caller that was, you know, we, and we hear this pretty often, right. Um, opportunities for our seniors to continue to stay in Costa Mesa. Um, I do like concept three as it provides that outline of, or the opportunity for a senior tower, permanent supported housing, helping us address ending the unhoused crisis in our community. Um, and also just, uh, piggybacking off of, um, commissioner Martinez's comments on, you know, as much as possible as we go forward. I mean, I love the outlines and opportunities that are described as a green space. And it does seem in the models that there is some sort of private shared space within some of these structures. So I think that helps at least mitigate an opportunity for those that live there. But if there's opportunities to carve out some more space, whether that's being creative with our parking or something to again, maximize opportunities for public open space. To help address, I wanted to also touch point on people's concerns of traffic, right? Obviously having more residents in our community as our city continues to grow, that in turn means more cars, more movement. I want to just clarify right i think you know and just and maybe just my misunderstanding of some of the public comments you know the two access points those are they're both allowing for cars to come in and out right it's not just it's not like the north road is only in and the south road is only out right they both allow in and out yeah correct so essentially like two lanes each to go in and to go out Now, I appreciate the piece, this separate piece that we got tonight about the fact sheets about the second access road and how we've exhausted conversations about Merrimack Way because it's a private road, so I get it, right? Nobody wants public encroachment to private spaces. On Shelley Circle, so I see the comments about Um, you know, uh, it will impede some of the space of the southern regional emergency operation because we don't have technically it's private. We're not supposed to. I guess there should be no public access to where that tower will be. Again, because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I really want to just make sure that we uncover any potential that we can create a third access road that helps us get folks out into Placentia, whether even if it is by bike, by foot, because I know that we have the Joanne Street, Joanne Street bike trail. Like if we were to, So hard to sort of describe what I have scribbled here on my map. But should we go along Shelley Circle before we get to the land where the tower is? Can we create an entryway, an exit way that, again, maybe it's a walkable path, maybe it's a bike path that connects with Joanne to allow folks to traffic, allow folks alternatives, right? We have a lot of green space. You're making this walkable, bikeable. So folks with bikes don't have to, you know, go down to Harbor, turn on Wilson and go around just to get to Estancia. Is there any other opportunities to explore an exit that leads us into Placentia?

um is that sorry okay i'm super excited to respond to that because we have um talked to the eoc and the state and debated internally for almost two years on this particular subject so um just a couple of clarifications so those gated access points that you see on this slide the eoc has agreed that those would be unlocked during emergency so that would be an access point um for emergency, for cars to get out potentially. But that's all they will allow. They want to restrict access into the EOC because of the radio tower and all the operations that happen there. We then debated having a walkway path around the perimeter of the specific plan. And that was something that we discussed with them at length because of security fencing, we discussed with the golf course operator, because again, Aaron falls, um, netting that needs to happen. And when we actually looked at design potentials for that, what that would look like, it was basically you're walking on a path. You have huge EOC gating here. You have huge netting here from the golf course. And it didn't feel like a super cozy place to be walking and biking. And so we ultimately shifted it into the interior of the site to go around the internal boundary of the EOC. And that was really why. We just were thinking, if someone's taking a walk at 6 AM in the morning, is that the place that would feel the most safe? There's not a lot of access points in and out. You can't walk through the golf course. So it seemed like the more appropriate location diversion was to actually just go back through the plan. But there still is a proposed, and if we could go to the open space plan, a pedestrian and cyclist pathway through most of, and you see that dotted green line there. That's why that jets in through most of the specific plan that gives you access to Harbor and up to Tanager. Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, I guess it would look, I mean, would you say, I think there's a bike trail that currently goes off of Harbor into tanager to get into tanager Park, we frequent that one. So yeah, I get it, you know, but I guess there's housing on one side and big fencing on the other. But you're saying that in this case, to cut through before, you know, to get into Shelley, it would be fencing on both ends. So kind of creating a trap kind of Yeah. Because it wouldn't be an exit route.

It's not impossible. It's just as we were looking at all the requirements that the EOC was going to have with fencing and that we would ultimately need to put up to make sure no one was getting hit by golf balls, it started not to feel like the safest design and maybe the most attractive design for folks to want to do their morning walk or do as part of their commute or to get in and out of the plan.

Or have an exit to get to the wonderful Fairview Park. I think that's right. I think a lot of a lot of everything you've described, it's about connectivity, right, being one of the priorities. That's a big missing piece. We're missing that connectivity to Wilson Elementary, to Estancia High School, to Fairview Park. To the what is it, the tree, the train that runs on the side, right? Anyway, so I don't know if there's any more development, creativity and opportunities to create some alternative path for folks that will live here. And anybody that wants to maybe also enter into the public spaces that are available here or some of the businesses and all of that without having to go all the way through Harvard Boulevard. And along the terms of traffic mitigation, I actually really did appreciate the caller that suggested having trolleys and greater bike roads. Well, we talked at nauseam about bike roads, but trolleys in our city. I mean, if we do get an opportunity, get the opportunity to develop this and there's development along with measure K is just going to continue to, this is just one out of the many, I know the housing developments that we're going to see in the future. So, I mean, Santa Ana has it, Newport beach has it. I mean, so it would be, sort of a creative way to help address and mitigate some of that. And that's it. That's all I have. Thank you.

All right. Does anybody have any last targeted comments?

Yeah.

All right. Go ahead, Vice Chair.

I'll try to keep it short, largely because nobody from the public is here, save for maybe one hearty soul. I would have, are there two? Okay, well, two hearty souls. And I don't know where to start, and I can't quite piece this together into a cogent summary. I guess the feedback I would have to the members of the public that spoke would be that I hear you. I agree with you. I SYMPATHIZE WITH YOU. AND THANKS FOR COMING. I DON'T HAVE TOO MUCH IN TERMS OF FEEDBACK TO STAFF IN TERMS OF PLEASE MAKE THESE CHANGES, PLEASE FIX THESE TYPOS, THAT SORT OF THING. I DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF FEEDBACK LARGELY BECAUSE I'VE GIVEN THAT FEEDBACK BEFORE. maybe understandably, it's been ignored. I think you feel you have constraints that you have to deal with and those constraints go beyond what I think is appropriate for the community. It's, you know, 2020, THE CITY COUNCIL HAD A STRATEGY OF 1500 UNITS. HOW WE GOT FROM THERE TO HERE, IT'S A MIND-BOGGLING THING TO CONTEMPLATE HOW WE GOT TO THIS POINT. THE CITY PAID US $3.5 MILLION TO MANAGE A COMMUNITY-BASED PLANNING PROCESS. IF YOU ASK MOST PEOPLE WHAT THAT probably means to them that the community is involved and shapes the plan. The community did not shape this plan. Nobody in the community said, oh, 4,000, that is a great number, that's what we'd like. And despite the statement in the staff report that said to study 4,000 units was directed by city council. Well, that's a little bit misleading too. No, city council agreed with a staff recommendation. The planning commission agreed with a staff recommendation to study this. Council didn't say, oh, let's go do 4,000 units, because guess what we're contemplating now at this site? 4,000. I don't even know how that's possible. The public, they don't even talk about height anymore. That's like five-story wraparound parking structures. They probably don't really care too much about that, because they're not even going to live there. No, what they're concerned about are the things that affect their life. Harbor Boulevard is a miserable street to drive on now. And it's going to be even more miserable. And the argument that somehow two streets going out dumping this traffic onto Harbor Boulevard is like better than one. you put three streets that dump out onto Harbor Boulevard. When people talk about the number of entry and exit points to their communities, whether they were talking about Mesa Del Mar or College Park, They're talking about streets that take traffic somewhere else, not there's five streets that dump it all into the same repository. And that's what we're doing with Harbor Boulevard. It's almost silly what we're doing. And when we talk about why we need to do that, we start by saying, well, anything over 2,300 units necessitates that. So the very first thing we should have been doing is holding to the 2300 that was in the original housing element update list. If that is the limit by which we no longer need a secondary access road, we should have held to it. And your report here even says that, 2300. Above that, there's a threshold. Why do we need the second road? Well, your fact sheet says we need it for mobility and public safety. I'm curious about the public safety aspect because we already know in case of emergency, Merrimack can be used. So what public safety is served by a secondary road when we already have Merrimack for emergencies? I mean, it doesn't, It doesn't make sense to somebody that's trying to really understand why. It's a story, it's a narrative, and you gloss over it, and people eventually leave. They ask a question, they get that kind of answer, and then they leave. Oh, the secondary access road will help keep traffic at or above the city standards. Really, well, what are those? We already know that doing all of this development is going to fail a couple of intersections, probably even more when we're done with this whole thing. Is that our city standard, to fail intersections? But no, we need a secondary access road so that we can dump all the traffic out easily to fail the intersections. I mean, it's illogical. We care about the golf course, yet we're not gonna do the design. The developer's gonna do the design. Well, why do we do the design on that $3.5 million if we're so convinced that we need this secondary access road? That doesn't make any sense to me. Park space. It's in here. Yes, there it is. It's on the slide in front of us. We're going to require 4.26 acres per thousand. Except maybe in lieu fees. I mean, do you want parks or don't you want parks? The same discussion came about with the inclusionary housing ordinance. Do you want affordable housing or don't you? You put in lieu fees, and what's a developer going to do? He's going to pay you the in lieu fee. Why? It's cheaper. It's easier. It's faster. It's expedient. He doesn't have to provide the affordable units. Here, same thing. Give me a break. The statewide minimum guideline for parkland, three acres per thousand. I don't know if that was in your specific plan or if that was in the EIR or one of the many attachments and dependencies to the EIR. Honestly, in the last four days, I probably skimmed through attempting to read over a thousand pages. So I'm not sure where I came across that. Statewide guideline. Three acres per thousand, not 4.26, three. Okay, we expect over 9,000 people in this development. That's 27 acres of parkland. 4.26 would take us up to 45 acres. Nobody cares. I'm talking to an empty chamber. 14 acres, oh my goodness gracious. impacts that are significant and unavoidable. I like the explanation on this one. Well, you know, the air quality is, oh, what was the term on that? That was a good term. I like that one. I never used that before. Let me find it. Non-attainment designation. So we live in an area that has a non-attainment designation. You just can't get there from here. Okay. So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to build even more and make it even worse. And the impact? Well, things are just going to be worse. Oh, OK. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Unbelievable. We talk about affordability. And unfortunately, the speaker that was advocating for that, we had a couple of them. but Ms. Russell, she's interested in ensuring that the affordable units are built in tandem with or at the same time as the market rate units so that it's not an afterthought. Yet at the same time, we have spent some time here making allowances for affordable, and Mr. Sakayoka's gone. He was the one who was interested in ensuring that we could have a consolidated footprint of affordable units, like in one single building. And the reason why that was, and it was explained at the time, is it would help with funding sources and this sort of thing. So I try to marry that concept with what Ms. Russell is interested in. I go, are we taking affordability seriously? The numbers are all here, 4,000 units, gotta pack in market rate units, because we really care about affordable units. Do we really care about affordable units? Or are we just trying to hit the RHNA number? And the more units we put in here, the faster and quicker we get to the RHNA number. I don't know, I'm not convinced that we care that much about it. Then I read in the staff report, that the city held a focus group meeting with various golf course clubs regarding the secondary access road. Now that sounds like a good idea. Well, that meeting was only two weeks ago. I've been talking about avoiding that secondary access road for over a year, probably close to two years. Two weeks ago, they have this focus group meeting with various golf course clubs. I saw no notification that meeting. I had no opportunity even to show up to that meeting. How serious are we? Well, one of the participants of that meeting happened to write a letter into the public record here. Mr. Scott Grady, pretty good letter, I thought. Pretty thoughtful letter, pretty reasonable letter. What does he think we ought to do? We ought to, number one, exhaust Merrimack as a secondary access. And every time we bring it up, we're told, no, it's private road. Can't do that. State subleased the land. Really? The state is bringing all this pressure to bear on us to do all this nonsense stuff? And we can't get the state to allow a road that was private to be used for public access? We can't accomplish that? Well, no, it's easier to give up and say, no, we talked to him. We talked to him 10 times, John, and it was 10 times no. So we're not doing that anymore. Unbelievable. The trigger point for the secondary access road, 2300 units. He asks about that. Mr. Grady asked about that in his letter. Are we gonna go back and study it the way he suggests here? I doubt it. I don't know if Ferris Pierce saw his suggestion here, but I doubt that we're really gonna do that. Why? Because nobody other than me and maybe Scott Grady and a couple other people think we ought to do everything we possibly can to avoid that secondary access road. We're not making any effort to do that. We talk, but we're not doing anything, just like the parks. I don't know. I don't know how we got here. It's a dismal disappointment. The public comes to the microphones here. They come to the microphones at the town hall. They filled out a survey over a year ago that said, would you want more housing if a secondary access road could be the way to do that? They overwhelmingly said no. That's part of this public input. What do we do? We ignore it. Why do we ignore it? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Why? Because we don't care. 4,000. This letter to the state is so, from the state, excuse me, is so fascinating to me. State didn't say we want 4,000. Nope. Nope, the state is saying, let's see, you, the city, have asked us, the state, if we could live with 4,000, and yeah, we could live with it. Now, this is all self-inflicted, and we're just pressing on. I don't know. I don't know. Really is a colossal disappointment to me. We're not being responsive to the public, not at all. It's an irresponsible thing that's in front of us here. It really is.

All right. I know it's late. Commissioner Dixon, go ahead. Specific questions. OK. So first of all, I think everyone on staff and the consultant team knows how I feel about the unit count. So I just want to get some specific questions. So we don't take into account the maps that are in the specific plan don't take into account Measure K rezoning of Harbor Boulevard. So we're going to have an island of 4,000 houses with zero parking required. and we're going to have one lane out, one lane in with, it disappeared off my screen, 1700 peak hour trips or some nonsense like that. And then we're gonna have, so we have no parking, we have two lane backbone instead of an actual road that people can use. I mean, if you go into an apartment complex, it's 400 units, they have greater mobility and transportation. And just to, characterized all of these comments. I am acutely aware, I do this for a living, I'm acutely aware that staff has been asked to do the impossible. I am not criticizing staff. You guys have been given a lot of different direction. You have to deal with a lot of different constituencies and a lot of different opinions. and we have direction from council getting rid of parking. And it's just, I understand there's a lot of ideological things going on and there's a lot of different state policies going on, but my job as the Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner is to plan for Costa Mesa. And I know darn well that if we start rezoning and we start converting Harbor Center into apartments or mixed use or whatever, all of a sudden you have 4,000 or 8,000 people stranded in they can walk and bike around there great but they've got to get out to harbor they've got to get out to tanager or wherever i'm sorry harbor times two within a block and we have to be realistic about the planning so the the the the and again the city council direction But the no parking is insane. I understand that there are people in this room and there are people who strongly feel that they don't need to have parking and they don't need to have cars and all this other stuff. However, the reality is that, and this is recent, according to the American Community Survey, 77% of us drive cars. 77%. You can not like that. You can hate that. 9% commute. 3% use transit, 4% maybe a bike or I have those mixed up. So it is irresponsible on every possible level to design a community of this size and scale and pretend that everybody's going to ride a bike or take a bus. They need to park their cars. They need to be able to get in and out. That's what works. We heard two different developers on two different projects tonight provide more parking than was necessary because that's what people want. And the hard reality is that 77% of people, and this is the latest statistics I could find in California and specifically Orange County, 77% of people drive cars. So I'm tired of this aspirational thinking when it comes to planning for my city. We can plan and we can have additional bikes and bike lanes. I love bike lanes. I ride a bike every day. And I ride from Congress Street to Paul Reno on some of the very worst bike lanes with the worst pavement, no paint, no light. I briefly pass through a super bike area with tons of green paint and new lanes, but the rest of it is crap. So I think we need to get our priorities straight. I think we need to stop. pretending that what some aspirational goal in the future is going to be here now. We have Fairview Developmental Center that we need to plan for. We need to make a specific plan. And we can include a ton of multimodal stuff. We have to. It's a state requirement. It's a county requirement. It's our own requirement. But we also have to be realistic about how people get around. And this, there is, I'm not going to get any more of that. So the more specific question is, how are we going to deal with the Measure K rezoning on Harbor? It's not included in the specific plan, and it's materially going to impact. I looked at the maps that showed the zoning, and it showed still business, commercial, and all the other stuff. I know Measure K hasn't, the rezoning hasn't happened yet, but it's going to happen, presumably. Yes.

You're right. It's a separate effort that would be contemplated by the planning commission and city council before the end of this year.

So literally every single assumption about the availability of services and other amenities outside of the specific plan area could be based on thin air.

No, it is being studied under its own program level environmental impact report. It will include a handful of different improvement requirements, such as a phase one environmental, because these are commercial sites. It will include transportation analysis in its own right. It will include improvements to meet our general plan and our LOS policies. It will need to meet all the mitigation measures that are outlined in that draft EIR, which is currently out for public review right now. So it has its own large range of improvement standards. We are anticipating coming to you on August 17th for a study session on that effort on its own, to give you a full picture of everything that would be required on those projects. But just to be clear, we've rezoned the housing element sites as of March. We are currently updating the housing element. We will have new sites that are currently Measure K sites that will become Mood sites as the city council adopts the revised housing element. The neighborhoods where we all belong, the Measure K sites is part of that.

still up for Planning Commission and City Council direction and approval so it hasn't has not yet been approved but we're doing a specific plan that's assuming that there are services and I read to the whole thing there are services and that are within adjacent that's why we only need 35,000 on-site right but they could be gone AND I UNDERSTAND YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH WHAT'S AVAILABLE NOW. I WISH YOU WOULD DO THE SAME FOR TRANSPORTATION AND I WISH YOU WOULD DO THE SAME FOR MOBILITY AND PARKING. OKAY. SO THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING THAT QUESTION. SO WE HAVE NO PARKING MINIMUMS WHICH IS, AGAIN, I GET IT, CITY COUNCIL DIRECTIVE, YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT THEY SAY. The no project alternative, there would be no master developer. Well, it seems like this entire process was hijacked by the financial feasibility analysis. And I heard that there were some back and forth with staff, which I was great to hear about tonight. So I'd like to know, so, How many times, how many drafts of that happened? And how many, when they came back and said that this is what it's going to be, did staff say, well, let's change all of these assumptions, whether or not the land's going to be sold or leased or whatever, and any assumptions that were made in that financial feasibility analysis, to tweak it, to get back to what the citizens overwhelmingly demanded, And every single iteration of Costa Mesa City Council action prior to this is done. And, you know, I was a little bit disappointed in the town hall when it had the state and city actions, which omitted the 2015 City Council action that called for, I think, let me look it up. Let's find it real quick. Hold on. Nope. In 2015, let's see. So October 2015, after discussion and public comment, the council unanimously recommended approximately 500 homes on the property, including about 300 tied to the proposed Janus Mountains project. roughly 28 acres of open space, private or public recreational facilities, and they were based on perspective getting rid of the thing. And then in, I believe it was 2019, then there was a big brouhaha where we had a town hall down at the senior center, I think, or at the park, I don't remember exactly where it was, because they were gonna, I think Supervisor Moorlach, or Senator Moorlach, whatever time, proposed to put a big homeless shelter there. And so that was shot down by the city council. I think it was 2019 or 2018. Then 2020, we had the city council action, which was a tremendous deliberation. I mean, it was a long meeting. I watched the whole thing. That was omitted from that as well. So I understand that staff is dealing with a very difficult task and with a very short timeline. I get that. But this is a very large portion of our city, and we have to make sure that we are respecting what the people want and we're respecting what... And it's a robust public engagement that we've just categorically ignored because we have to give a 15% IRR. Where did we come up with the 15%? I mean, when I did my surveys and looked and studied, it was anywhere from 6% to 17%, but as low as 6%. So I just want to make sure that we queried every single part of that to get down to what the citizens wanted instead of just running with the first iteration we got and saying, we can't do anything but 3,450. We're going to go through this process. We're going to make it look like we're doing a public engagement. And I'm not saying you didn't. You did. There's a lot of different workshops. We should have had town halls earlier. We should have had committee. I know that's not your choice. That was the city council's choice. You can't put that back in the bag. But I just want to understand why we're at this. We have to do 15%. We have to do $34.50 at the minimum because of this financial feasibility analysis, which when you look at your own letter or PlaceWorks letter, that the financial feasibility analysis represents a planning level estimation of the financial risk and rewards that a master developer would face undertaking development. It is based on industry standards. But the selected master developer, they could come up with something else. They could find a different way. It's much cheaper. They're not going to build fewer units. Or it could be much more expensive. It seems like every single thing, our general plan, our citizen engagement, our literally our history of development of Costa Mesa, which is thrown out the window when that financial feasibility analysis hit. And I've been complaining about this since it first showed up. But we're now at brass tacks stage. And so I want to make sure that we query that and analyze that and make sure that we have very solid answers before this goes to council.

Thank you, Commissioner Dixon. I do want to just take an opportunity to clarify. Staff is not saying that we need to have an internal rate of return of 15% or we have to have a specific plan that's 4,000 units. What we are trying to do is get a best guess at what the master developer will likely submit. And that's what the financial feasibility is about. So we determined as a snapshot that the financial feasibility would determine 3,400 units to 4,000 as being financially feasible. So the result of that from staff's perspective is IT IS LIKELY AND REASONABLE TO ANTICIPATE A MASTER DEVELOPER WILL SUBMIT A PROJECT THAT WILL LOOK LIKE THAT BECAUSE IT IS FINANCIALLY FEASIBLE AND THEY WILL LIKELY WANT A 15% INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN. THERE'S OBVIOUSLY NUANCES TO THAT. I DISCUSSED THAT WITH COMMISSIONER ANDRADE'S QUESTION. YES, THERE ARE DEFINITELY TWEAKS THAT COULD HAPPEN THAT WOULD MAKE IT THAT WOULD CHANGE THAT. I JUST WANT TO CLARIFY THAT. A STAFF'S ORIGINAL RECOMMENDATION LAST SUMMER WAS TO DO 3800 UNITS, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 36 AND 3800 UNITS. WE DECIDED THE CITY COUNCIL DIRECTED US TO STUDY UP TO 4000 UNITS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE IMPACTS WERE. NOT NECESSARILY FOR THAT. SO THERE IS STILL OPPORTUNITY FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE CITY COUNCIL TO DIRECT US ON WHAT THAT MAXIMUM UNIT COUNT IS. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE IT'S SUPER CLEAR THAT If the planning commission and city council do choose a maximum that's below financial feasibility, again, what we will likely see is a master developer submitting a plan that is above our maximum utilizing state density bonus law. And when they do that, we will lose some of our control because they will use concessions and waivers. So I just want to make sure that that is super clear because what we're trying to do is we're trying to, put our crystal ball out and try to understand what is gonna happen in the next year with the most up-to-date and available information that we have.

Which is next to impossible to do. Which is difficult to do. Which is why a specific plan, which is our specific plan, it's not a master developer's specific plan, should reflect what our community is asking for and what we have, our tradition of our development in this community, and what the people who have been surveyed and have been interviewed, and there are some people who want the higher unit counts, absolutely. But from everything I've seen, they want to lower unit count with more open space. And so those are my comments. I just want to make sure that we're querying all those things. Because you can take a general plan, and you can pick a policy, and two people with exactly the different goals can apply that same policy to their thing with the way you interpret it. So if I take a dart and throw it at the general plan policies, I'm not going to hit one that this conforms with, in my opinion. But it's a different opinion for other people. So I'm just very concerned, because I don't see how this is going to integrate into our general plan, because it is wildly outside of it. And I know that there are some people furiously working to change policies to get us to not need parking anymore and not need streets that cars can drive on anymore. But at the time, this is a reality we're dealing with here in Costa Mesa. And I'm extremely concerned. that we're going to have something that becomes not viable because we're not providing the necessary mobility elements to it because of this aspirational goal to have no cars or that we're not making something that's going to be without adequate parking and without adequate services and people are stranded in there. You know, there was very recently a pretty large affordable housing development, I don't remember where, that had to be sold because it didn't work. It was designed with all these aspirational goals, and it just failed. So I just want to make sure we're designing for Costa Mesa and with what the people of Costa Mesa want and that that's what we're doing. And I just don't see that reflected here. So that's my opinion. And I just want to really quickly, project alternatives, And as far as, let's see, that's all in the past. I think those are good enough. I think that we've covered all the other stuff. But I was concerned about the assuming that we're going to have all the retail and all the services on Harbor when those could be rezoned and redeveloped within the same project timeline as this. And I'm concerned that we're not adequately planning for mobility with the number of chips we have. And I'm concerned that we're not, you know, that no parking's insane. And I know that people don't share my opinion on that. But being on the Planning Commission for seven years previously and now, the number one complaint is parking. I was at the Wayfarer last night, and not a single parking space, not one. People double parked everywhere. So pretending that we can't have parking is just nonsense, in my opinion. So thank you very much.

All right. I'm going to take 30 seconds to give you my input. I think it's perfectly fair and reasonable to be concerned much like we've heard from our community that one primary egress and ingress point is sufficient to serve a project of this size and scope. And to that end I would agree with the vice chair that we should be looking at Merrimack Way and talk to the state more directly I don't think the city should should shoulder the burden of having to provide a secondary easement on the golf course At least as a kind of initial matter I I did read with interest that you know, there's this land lease with the harbor village operator that's held by the state I don't know to what extent that's really been examined and But it's in the state's best interest to renegotiate that because a secondary access point only provides more value to the property. So I would start there. And that's all I want to comment on tonight. All right. Any last parting thoughts?

Just to clarify, we would rather... Why can we look at this and explore opportunities to negotiate with the golf course? We're prioritizing negotiating with the state, but we don't want to negotiate at all with the golf course and allowing us to have that second access road, maybe allowing us to have on the west side of the project connect to Fairview Park or down to Shelley, right?

COMMISSIONER RODRIGUEZ, WE OWN THE GOLF COURSE.

CORRECT.

SO WE DON'T NEED TO NEGOTIATE. IT'S UP TO THE COUNCIL AS THE POLICY MAKERS.

THE CONVERSATIONS THAT WE'RE HAVING, IT JUST SEEMS LIKE IT'S UNTOUCHABLE, RIGHT? BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO, AND I UNDERSTAND WE HAVE TO RECONFIGURE IT AND ALL OF THAT AND THE IMPACT TO THE COMMUNITY, BUT THAT WOULD COMPLETELY BE TEMPORARY WHEN IT'S A MUCH LARGER ASK TO GO BACK TO THE STATE AND TRY TO STRONGARM THEM. No, give us access to your private road, right? And that we know why that's private, right? That's very specific population that is being served in that area that needs to be protected. So again, if anything, I would love to explore negotiating with the special interest in the golf course to allow for that second access road and even consider a third out of the west side of the facility as a feedback point as well.

ALL RIGHT. WITH THAT, IF THERE'S NO MORE COMMENTS, I'M GOING TO CLOSE THE ITEM. CAN I GET A MOTION?

MOVE TO RECEIVE AND FILE.

MOTION BY COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ. WE HAVE A SECOND. I CAN'T SEE IT HERE. SECOND BY COMMISSIONER DIXON. LET'S CALL FOR THE QUESTION.

CHAIR, PLEASE.

I CAN'T GET TO MY SCREEN. IT'S A YES. Okay, public services report. Mr. Yang.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given this late hour, no report from Public Works.

Excellent. Thank you. Director Tai, community development report.

Well, on behalf of public services, I think we have an excellent generator. I wanted to thank the public for attending the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan Town Hall last week. And very quickly, the zoning code amendments that Planning Commission discussed will be going to Council on August 4th. And then we'll be coming back to Planning Commission for FTC and the CAP on August 10th. And then we'll see a Planning Commission for that special meeting August 17th for neighborhoods where we all belong. So thank you.

Thank you. And lastly, Mr. Preziosi, anything from city attorney?

Thank you, Chair Harlan. Nothing that can't be deferred till the next meeting. Excellent.

We are adjourned.