Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

OK, I'm not sure exactly whose clock to go by, but I think we'll start today's session. And the recording is on. Thank you, Madam Secretary. I'd like to welcome Logan Jeffs to the dais. As a commissioner, we have a full slate today. At this point, I will call to order the March 5th, 2025 regular meeting of the City of Irvine Planning Commission. Madam Secretary, would you please call roll?

Commissioner Stark.

Here.

Commissioner Lin. Commissioner Jeffs.

Here.

Commissioner Grossman.

Here.

Commissioner De La Cusack.

Here.

Vice Chair Bhatia.

Present.

Chair Pearson.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam. At this time, I would like all those that are able to stand up and give the Pledge of Allegiance to our wonderful flag.

Begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag 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. At this time, we have a presentation relating to the Great Park. And let's move forward with this.

Good evening, Chair Pearson, Vice Chair Bettia, and members of the Planning Commission, Steve Torelli, Director of the Great Park, and pleased to be with you tonight to give you a brief overview of some of the things that we've been up to at the Great Park over the last few months and take any questions that you may have. First, just as a kind of refresher, I'm going to go through this presentation counterclockwise from the sports park and then around through Cultural Terrace, heart of the park. northern sector and then the bosque and all the updates that we're doing but just as a refresher the framework plan was adopted by the council back in 2022 and since then we've been diligently executing it this year is really marked by a lot of construction so if you were to drive out there today you'd see a lot of dirt being moved and a lot of dirt to be moved I'll start with the sports park and western sector. This is the area that's been open and existing. The western sector opened in about 2010. Sports complex started in 2017 as part of the adjacent landowner agreement with Heritage Fields. And as we've operated it over about the last nine years, we have a lot of lessons learned. So we've made a lot of modifications to it or we're making modifications to it. One of those that might be of interest to this group is the parking lot connectivity between parking lot six and seven right now there are independent lots and if you were to accidentally go into lot seven which is a very small lot and get find out that it's full you have to go all the way to ridge valley and make a u-turn come back make another u-turn potentially so we're building some connectivity so you can make it all the way back over to lot six where we added about 300 spaces last year And you could either get back out onto Skyhawk or Marine Way from that side. It cuts back on a little bit of traffic and a lot of people circling around. Next piece is the operations and maintenance building. It's something that we've contemplated building in the park for the last at least eight or nine years that I've been with the City Manager's Office. That project was awarded for construction last Tuesday, or sorry, a week ago Tuesday at the City Council meeting. So that will be underway here shortly. We're also going to be underway with the shade structure improvements. So we've been adding a lot of artificial shade while we wait for a lot of those trees that were planted during the 2016, 17, 18, and 19 years to come to full maturity and provide that natural shade. Additionally, there's some additional enhancements in the sports park, concessions in the baseball. We've already completed soccer, softball, tennis. It's making these hot food ready. And then, of course, continuing with our field renovations to make sure the fields remain at a high quality usable for all of our athletics and sports users. Moving along to the cultural terrace, we've had a lot of work done over the last few years. Last summer, we really hit a milestone and completed the demolition and mass grading that was removing a number of old base-era buildings, doing the lead and asbestos remediation, cleaning and clearing the site, and putting pads in for our partners with the Portent City Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum and preparing for all the other development that's going to go out there. We also awarded the site utility contract for that last Tuesday at the City Council meeting. We're awaiting some state clearances to get going with that partner construction, which we expect to receive here in the next few weeks. And then shortly thereafter, we'll get that site utility work started. On the heels of that, we'll be doing the landscape and hardscape installation and the building 369 renovation, which will end up being the largest site COMMUNITY CENTER IN THE CITY AT ABOUT 30,000 SQUARE FEET. IT WILL REALLY ALLOW TO TAKE SOME OF THE CULTURAL USES OUT OF THE SPORTS PARK, PUT THEM INTO SOME PLACES A LITTLE BIT MORE CONDUCIVE TO THEIR USE, A LITTLE BIT BETTER PARKING AND DEFINITELY BETTER CONNECTIVITY. This is just a shot of the cultural terrace looking kind of from the east edge of the cultural terrace lounge. It's a really large greenscaped area. It'll be online sometime at the end of 2027 is the anticipation. And it's really that passive park that a lot of people have been asking for over the years. And so this is going to be really that first phase of city projects as part of the framework plan that's going to come up and be completed. The next area we'll hit is the heart of the park. This map shows kind of the different zones in the heart of the park. This is the largest area. It includes, obviously, Amphitheater, Lake, Great Meadow. We've completed the demolition and mass grading. The loop road utilities, which provides all the water, dry utilities, fiber, everything that's needed to serve the heart of the park, went out to bid. That was awarded last week at the council meeting. That work will be kicking off shortly. And really, once that work starts to come in, we'll be able to build all of the great features of the heart of the park. Quickly, on the heels of that, we're going to be bidding out the first phase of the lake construction, which is installing some of the pipelines around the lake. That way, the land plan is kind of where it is. We have all the infrastructure, and we can start doing some of that, the horizontal utility improvements to get the landscape irrigation in and eventually get the landscape and hardscape in. We anticipate that Loop Road utility installation is probably an 18-month total project, but we'll obviously kind of phase as it goes around. That's really going to be a milestone once that gets completed. We'll take one moment to just provide a little bit of information on one of the features of the heart of the park, which is the lake. The lake is about a 25-acre area that captures 55 acres of stormwater, so it acts as both stormwater recapture as well as an aesthetic feature to prevent all that water from going into Agua Shenan or Bee Canyon. and kind of adds a little bit to the sustainability of the park, also provides some wetland areas. So it's an important feature of the overall design of the park. And if you drove out there today, you'd actually see those areas are totally dug out and just kind of waiting for those pipelines to go in and then eventually for the liners and the rest of the build out of it. The next item in Heart of the Park is the amphitheater. Back in 2023, Council directed staff to proceed with a 10,000-seat state-of-the-art facility. Those construction documents are nearing completion, probably be through plan check by the beginning of summer and then probably out to bid shortly thereafter. This is another shot that combines a couple of different features of the park, one being the lake, two being kind of the lakeside areas. The contemplation is we have a lot of areas for people to gather and enjoy the facility, and then the amphitheater with fireworks in the background. Moving up next, we'll hit the northern sector. A lot of people may be more familiar with this as the ARDA site. It's about 125 acres. We've completed the building demolition up there. That was about 76 buildings that had to be removed. We're now to the phase where we're going to start doing the Tarmac Foundation utility demolition. We'll be back to the City Council on March 24th with the award of contract for that. That project all in is probably an 18 to 20 month project. However, we're fast-tracking the first phase of that to get the perimeter park area in, which is the area around Cadence and Poussin, following it up quickly with grading and infrastructure, developing a pad for the library, and then doing the landscape and hardscape on the remainder of it. And a note on the perimeter park, it's an area that's going to take about, we've generated a lot of dirt on the site over the last 20 years of development. So about 480 to 500,000 cubic yards of dirt is going to be used to help landscape and build up this area. Right now, if you go down Cadence, there's about a 13 to 18 foot drop right off the roadway into the RSA. We're going to level that up. There will be some nice topography to help screen from the neighborhoods a little bit. but it also provides some great park amenities immediately adjacent to those cadence park neighbors that are a little bit further from the main part of the park as we develop it out. We expect that this project, again, the demolition will go to the board and council on the 24th of this month. We're going to be going out to bid for grading of the BOSC project shortly thereafter. The anticipation is to have this area hopefully ready to open by this time next year, probably about April or May. Next item is the Veterans Memorial that's in that area. This is contemplated for the area closest to the perimeter park. It's about 35 to 40 acres of land. It really is a testament to the sacrifices of the base and in the memory of the base just south of that, the Botanic Gardens. both of those will come online a little bit later and I do make a note at this part of my presentation the the artist site is one of the more challenging sites to develop because it's all concrete and it's thick concrete it was old aircraft parking there's building foundations and some potential unknown so that's why that demolition timeline is a little bit longer after we get done with demolition then we have to finish the site-wide grading going with utilities so it just takes Bit longer than some of the other areas that maybe just had asphalt or a couple of runways running through them The Bosque is an area of the park that has been open since about 2017 and we've got a lot of feedback from the community over the years on this and so we're Working through a number of improvements to address those community concerns landscape improvements some connectivity improvements and then some food and beverage additions The first piece of those new programs is that section between cadence and benchmark, adding some playgrounds, fixing some of the water reclamation areas, adding some lawns and some additional shade, just kind of cleaning it up. Originally, it was a fully California native area. However, California native ends up being very high maintenance in that area, and it's not particularly usable for people that want to go walking out there with their kids or ride their bike and hang out. The next area is that South Bosque area. That's where that bridge would connect over Great Park Boulevard. That's going to be going out to bid here probably in the next month. That'll be 18 months once it's awarded. But that's going to provide you continuous connectivity from north of Great Park Boulevard at Pavilion Park, sorry, north of Irvine Boulevard at Pavilion Park all the way into the sports park. So you can basically get all the way through without having to cross a roadway. And finally, the canopy and hanger 10. So there's a private developer purchased a number of acres from Heritage Fields Five Point to build a food and beverage center. They're well under construction. They have all their vertical framing up right now. They're cranking pretty good. That 55,000 square feet should be up and operational by the end of this calendar year. They're anticipating opening the gross rankered retail sometime in November, possibly early December. On the city side, we kicked off grading earlier this week. We're proceeding with demolition on some buildings that are kind of in the way of that access road that you see around the perimeter. And we're getting ready to deliver pads sometime mid-year to Almquist to build on their part of it while we continue doing the infrastructure around it. This is just kind of a glamour shot of what the Onquest area that's currently under construction looks like if you drove down Beacon from Great Park Boulevard today. These are those buildings that are currently going up. And finally, I'll provide a little bit of an outlook on kind of what we have coming over the next few months here. As I said, 2026 is really going to be marked by a lot of construction. Over the last many years, we've done a lot of planning. We've done a lot of ideas. And this year, we're really turning that up into development of the park, building the park, and opening the park. And so we're going to be onboarding all those contracts that we awarded last Tuesday. It takes a little bit of time to get all the insurance and bonding in place. So we're going to be doing that this month. We'll also be coming back with, as I said, that bid award for the northern sector demolition. In April, we're going to kick off all of those contracts that now have been onboarded and all that work will start. We're going to be doing some bid issuance for that building 369, which is that community center. That perimeter park grading is going to probably get kicked off and released for a construction bid. And again, we'll be getting started on that construction of the operations maintenance facility loop road and the cultural terrace. With that is my presentation tonight. Happy to take any questions that the board has.

Thank you, Steve, for the presentation. Very interesting and, you know, it looks like we're moving forward quickly and in the right direction. I will ask Madam Secretary, do we have any public comments on this item?

If anyone on Zoom wishes to speak, now is the time to raise your hand. We will take speakers in the chamber first. Chair, there are no public comments on this item.

Very good. Then I will open this up for our fellow commissioners with questions. I'll start at the far end and ask Brenda.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much for the presentation. I do have a few questions. I did watch the Great Park board meeting and the presentation there. And I think the one takeaway that I think obviously is of great concern is the budget. Seeing that we are, I think it was predicted to be around $7 million this year. How does that, if anything, impact the plans that we have?

So the operating side of it and the capital side of it are kind of on different, somewhat same sources, somewhat different sources. As I kind of relate in that presentation, the way that the Great Park has some special financial conditions, it almost inevitably is over budgeted and then it comes in like the year that we just finished. 2020 425 that had been estimated at about a seven million dollar upside down delta also and we ended up a million to the positive in the immediate term the concern isn't as great as it is as we go forward a lot of the landscape contracts will be rebidding this year and we so we think we're going to be getting closer towards those contract numbers and what we try to do is project out when we're doing our financial projections for instance if we know we have there's a kind of a standard amount that that stuff is going up that contract services are going up or materials are going up we try to program that in and sometimes what that will look like in the intermediate years is that man you have this you have all this money that you're not spending but really it's so that when you get to maybe your three or four of the projection and those new contracts hit There is a huge jump there, but when we're looking at the projected contract, you can see kind of where we've been tracking those numbers all the way along. We do have a lot of maintenance contracts coming up in the next two years. We expect those to come in higher as prevailing wage goes up, as minimum wage goes up. Those do significantly affect what we're doing out in the park. Really, I think the key to that was once we start opening the heart of the park with the new revenue from parking revenue, from amphitheater, from kind of tightening our belts a little bit, we end up with a kind of slight structural deficit that we're projecting right now. It's not something that's insurmountable. We think that with some decisions that we'll be bringing back in the next six months to the City Council and Great Park Board, we'll be able to close that. I think it's almost, when you look at the total dollar amounts, some might say it's in the margin of error, but I would hate to get to 2030, 2031 and not have addressed it. I'd rather address it now. And that's kind of why we brought that item forward and why we're really trying to just get ahead of that.

Sure. Thank you for that. And I think ongoing, just looking into the future, another thing that's just hanging over... I'm sure all our heads is just maintenance costs. For instance, when we look at the water feature, it's fantastic. You know, the idea, the concept, wonderful. In terms of maintenance, do we have a plan for how much is this going to cost to maintain? Is this all just...

Yeah, so in the basically the total operating budget that I presented a week ago, those numbers, the anticipated budget for that is in there. It's on the range of, I think, 1.6 or 1.8 for the entire body of water. And if you look at it just as, hey, this is a nice feature, it might seem a little high, but if we weren't, Building that lake you'd end up building a lot of what they call natural treatment system retention basins And you'd have to maintain those and when you look at it on a kind of dollar-for-dollar basis With the watershed that it covers it doesn't really end up being significantly more expensive in the operating phase than Kind of a regular stormwater system would be and it does provide a nice little amenity to the park Okay, and is it okay chair if I continue or would you like me to okay?

Arnis

I just have a couple questions about along the lines of what Commissioner Lynn was talking about, the funding. With the funding, I know it's primarily CFDs that is funding this, like there's no tax dollars. Is that still correct?

That is correct. There's a city council resolution from 2006 that prohibits any general fund money from going into the Great Park. So on the operating side, it's CFD. There's some miscellaneous from rents, from interim uses like TVI or Wild Rivers, and then user fees from the folks that use the park. On the capital side, there's some money that had been accrued in the operating fund over many years. There's also some of the Department of Finance settlement money, but the lion's share of the development money is CFDS.

Now, with the amphitheater, I remember discussions in the past where you would not use the CFDs or you'd be using the state settlement money. Is that still like...

It's not required under the under the authorization that council gave so if we were gonna lease the facility to another operator You can't lease a CFD built facility This wouldn't be leased this would be city-owned The city would basically be hiring an operator that would be stepping in and managing certain aspects of it But the city would retain ownership would retain the leasehold interest and ends up financially In a better position, so there's like an exchange rate when you look at the CFD for every hundred million dollars that you bond, you're potentially giving up about, you know, between six to eight million dollars depending on the bond issuance in CFD revenue that would otherwise potentially go into the operating fund. So when you look at the park build out like we're looking right now, the amphitheater exchanges to drive operating revenue back to the park that covers a lot of the features that don't have a revenue component. You know, the great lawn, nice feature. People are going to enjoy it. They're going to go picnic out there, but there's no revenue component. Same thing largely with the lake. You know, you could have pedal boats, but those aren't. really going to drive the same kind of recovery. So it kind of balances and that's that presentation I provided last week. That's that where you really see an adjustment in the balancing of it in the 2030-31 year. That's kind of the effect of that piece.

Now, looking at future funding for this park, because obviously there's other ways you could Build this park. I remember Watching the last meeting there was discussion about parking hotels. What else is the city exploring?

So the City Council had directed us to move forward with parking. We'll be bringing that back to the Council probably in the summertime. There's really kind of, there's a lot of triggers that we've already pulled on and there's kind of four that I highlighted that we're going to be back to the Council with direction. One of them is user fees. We really have not significantly increased the user fees to keep up with the cost recovery model that the council adopted in 2017, because there's a lot of pushback on it, quite frankly. I think we're at the point now where we need to make those modest increases to help stabilize it. Is that going to clear the entire $2 million? I doubt it. Because there is a limit where you hit a market cap where people just aren't going to pay it. But the mix of the park does lend itself to being able to yield some higher revenue, especially in the national sports tournaments and a lot of that weekend drive. The other piece of it was sponsorship revenue. The original cost recovery plan did contemplate sponsorship revenue. It's something that we don't currently have. we have one sponsorship from uci health there's a lot of other opportunity out there but currently the policy is pretty clunky and so we want to come back with some updates to that in the future to get that moving the other piece of it was just looking at operational efficiency how the park was originally planned how it's performing relative to that and what things we could do better and so we have that kind of analysis going on right now and then that fourth piece was Are there additional revenue generating opportunities we could do? And one of them was potentially a hotel. The agreements allow entitlement at least for up to two hotels within the Great Park property. Our initial performance on those shows that those could present a substantial amount of both lease revenue and then if you take the TOT revenue, the resolution from 2006 allows you to capture some of that revenue and put it back into the park. It could be a substantial source of revenue. We think between those items, we'd end up running a slight surplus, which really helps us with being a little bit more proactive in the maintenance and renovation of things.

And that possibility, like you're talking about, that would be on city property, not five points? It would be on city property, correct.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Arnis. Go to Raj. Questions?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Steve, for the presentation. And I also want to thank SWA for proper planning, very prudent approach to the Great Park, as well as the retail. I had a question about the Perimeter Park. So that proximity is closest to schools and the Great Park neighborhood, and I reside in Cadence. And this could be a question for SWO, or you may know this, but are there any features of that perimeter park that allows for children to play on seesaws and certain attributes for them to play, or is it just open field?

You know, I do not recall offhand. I think there is at least one player in there, but I can check and get back to you on that.

Okay. No, thank you. The other question I had was regarding the lakes. I noticed that there was some drainage. So it's great that you're using recycled natural water. Is there a sort of like a time span where the lake is completely emptied out and you replenish it with new water? How does that work?

No, there's a number of pipelines that are going to surround the lake, so it's going to be continuously circulated and filtered, UV sterilized. They have a lot of different technologies that they use now to make sure that the water is safe, doesn't create a hazard. What would happen is in times, you know, when we hit the wintertime and you have massive anticipated storms, there's quite a bit of freeboard in the lake, especially in the north part of the lake. A lot of the immediate grass areas and surround is kind of wetlands, so it can expand. There's also the ability, if necessary, to drain down. If we had, you know, what they call the Pineapple Express come through those atmospheric rivers, we could drain it down if necessary, but we did the analysis and over the last hundred years there is plenty of capacity in there to hold what we would expect to get in a really wet winter and without having to push any of that water into any of the watersheds around the lake or around the park.

Okay, and are there species like ducks and are planning on having any of the species like we do in the Woodbridge?

I don't know that that's been contemplated yet. I'll tell you that we're going to try to avoid geese because apparently they're very problematic to maintain, but I don't know about any other waterfowl.

Okay. Great. The other question I had was for the Bosque Bridge. Is that going to be during the construction, which is around the corner, is that going to be an impediment to any traffic flow or is it going to cause congestion? I mean, that part is the mecca of people rotating in and out of sports complex and, you know, and then, of course, the retail in the future. But that's going to be done by then. So I want to know how that's going to work out.

Yeah, the way that that's going to end up being constructed, you know, we've already kind of built the grading abutments on either side. So I would suspect it's, you know, I think it's a clear span bridge, so there's not necessarily a girder or a pile in the middle of it. So I would imagine as they're doing the false work for it, there might be some access issues, but I don't see the road closing down for any of it. You know, it's not like a freeway. So I would imagine that false work would go up in the evenings over a period of weeks in order to maintain that opening, similar to how we did the Jeffrey Open Space Trail, where we were able to keep that Jeffrey piece open and the freeway open largely as the false work was put up. And obviously, we don't have a span the size of the freeway, so it's not as involved. But I don't think it's going to impact any of the traffic. And that segment of it, why they get that wood form up there is probably It was probably a couple months worth of work. I would imagine, though, we shouldn't see a lot of impact from that.

I see. Okay. And last question. It's not even a question. I was able to go and take a tour of this park, the Great Park. The concrete, and you mentioned the asphalt and all that, that was there next to the control tower. That's very historic, and I encourage anyone who takes a tour to just, you know, grab a piece of that concrete. It's history. It's our former Marine Corps base. You know, and I don't know what they're going to plan to do with it, which you can answer to that if you have an answer, but... Yeah, I took one home just for a token of appreciation for what they've done.

Yeah, so we've saved some of the panels because you know those are like 16 by 16 foot grids that were the old tie-down area. So we've saved some of those for future reuse. All of the concrete on the base ends up being reused for base. So all the roadways, actually all the roadways within Great Park neighborhoods as well as the roadways on the base, buildings all end up using that crushed aggregate which really adds to the sustainability of the park quite frankly because we're not trucking in just tons and tons and tons of aggregate. We're demolishing it on-site, we're grinding it on-site, and then we're reusing it on-site.

Okay. No, thank you. No further questions. Thanks, Raj. We'll go down to Logan.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Steve, for the presentation. Just a couple of questions from me. One thing not mentioned in the presentation, I remember recently hearing about the, I think it's the Woosh gondola project. Is that still in play and how does that accommodate some of these features that are being built?

So the Woosh system is contemplated for the park. It's in a well future phase. It's in one that is not funded at this point because we really want to get the park built. But the infrastructure for it so that it could be overlaid if that was a decision that a future council wanted to make the infrastructure is there so we're making sure that you know putting conduit in the ground is very inexpensive and so we are putting you know what we need for an electrical what we need for rebar and all that kind of stuff is going in on the front end the placement has kind of been aligned on it but the actual construction of it is is pushed into I think from a presentation a few months ago, it's probably what we call phase three, which is that like 2036 timeframe, just because the cost of it versus the cost of building some of the other features that I think the public is maybe more interested in getting up and running is kind of the balance that we use to weigh that.

Understood. And then very excited about the lake. And just to get a sense of the scale, how large is it, say, compared to like the Woodbridge Lakes? Is that information that you have?

You know, I don't know the size of the Woodbridge Lake. I think it's at low water, it's about 25 acres, and it can go up to about 32 acres at high water on that. But I don't know the total surface area of the Woodbridge Lakes. No problem.

And then you might have mentioned it, but what's the timeline for the lake build-out?

So lake build-out's probably about a 28-month total time frame. You know, I would say, you know, when you're looking at the heart of the park, it's likely that that entire project comes online at once because it's large. There's a lot of pieces that need to be done there, and it's just easier to do things when you're not working around one piece that's open and one piece that's closed. I would suspect that the entire thing would come online sometime early 2030. you know, maybe late 29, but more likely early 2030, and then you'd have kind of a full campus open up there.

Great. That's all for me. Thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Logan. Seth.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Steve, for the presentation. Related to the conversation, so the mobility around the Great Park as you build this out, obviously, WUSH was one of the ideas, trams and others. Can you talk a little bit about any thoughts as you're planning? Are you building electrical trams or different ways that we believe we can get people around the park, especially the busiest areas?

Yeah, so we have a lot of, you know, all the trails have been designed as multimodal. So, you know, one original contemplation was to bring, you know, like a tram system or, you know, some kind of mass transit system that would circulate you through the park. So the infrastructure, again, with the sizing of the pathways, the bridges, the structural supports, that's all there. Our initial analysis of it shows that until you really hit build out, there's not a need for it unless, you know, once you have an amphitheater trying to get people potentially from the train station up. What we really tried to work on and refine as we're developing the overall park plan is the connectivity into the park. Number one, to get it away from the neighborhoods because we don't want to impact the Great Park neighborhoods unnecessarily. And number two is, How do we make sure people can get in and park quickly? Because when you can't park quickly, that's when it starts causing traffic issues on the roadways. So a couple of traffic improvements. I'm sure everybody's aware of the undercrossing at Marine Way. That'll be done probably about this time next year. I think that's going to be an absolute game changer so that people coming from the south can exit Big Parkway and enter the park without having to get onto the the sand canyon quagmire of those four traffic lights immediately adjacent to each other on the five. We're also actively working with Caltrans and OCTA to make that five off-ramp northbound be a direct shot onto Marineway so it eliminates one of those traffic lights and makes that flow much more efficient. Candidly, that's several years out just because we're dealing with a lot of regulatory agencies on that. and then finally adding toll lanes on and off ramp to the 133 at Great Park Boulevard. I think the combination of those three things, along with the way we've laid out the parking on the site, so for instance, the heart of the park, if you were coming from the south, you could come in up Marine Way, kind of jog up to Great Park Boulevard, make that right turn directly into those lots. And there's just, you know, we feel sufficient parking to meet every requirement. If we had a situation where that parking was impacted in the cultural tariffs, we have some old tarmac that provides additional kind of surplus parking that's very easy to divert those people down to Skyhawk. And so we think we're trying to address some of the lessons learned again with the existing park in the future park and making sure that we're being cognizant of not only the Great Park neighbors, but also the neighbors in the adjacent communities that could be impacted if this wasn't done properly. Excellent.

Taking that into account and thinking about the lessons we learned from the 4th of July in the previous year, when would you anticipate we could host an event like we did for the 4th of July? I'm not talking about the 250th or anything like that, but just even a major community event like that.

You know, I think if we had realized how popular that event was going to be, some additional, you know, in hindsight, there are some things that could have made that work a little bit better, off-site parking, for instance. So I think that's one of those components we do. As the cultural terror starts to come online, you know, that adds a substantial parking inventory to the park. And I think once that marine way access opens, the problem right now is if you're coming to the Great Park, Everything is off of based off of Sand Canyon and ultimately everything is really based off of Ridge Valley and so it just creates a choke point and as soon as those parking lots filled up you're in this doom loop and it just turns into complete gridlock. I think once we have throughput in traffic that helps having the additional with the cultural terrace to be another 4,000 parking spaces total. I think that definitely would open the door to larger events. And then, you know, obviously when the heart of the park completely opens, I think at total build-out we have about 14,000 parking spaces, which gives us more than I think we would potentially need. Prior to that time, if there was a need to do a large event, you know, there are other facilities available. especially on weekends and holidays that you know that other cities have contracted with like community colleges to host parking I know Norco does that for one of their parks for events I know some areas in San Diego do the same thing so if there's a need to it could be done our preference obviously is to get people parked on site and I think late 27 early 28 would be that time frame when we'd be we'd be a little bit better there

Okay, thank you. Just one comment to share with you. You talked about the four different buckets of fees and ways you're going to generate revenue, and you talked about user fees and the pushback that has been in the past. I was heavily involved when there was, many years ago, when we were trying to raise fees in other parks. It is a very sensitive topic. I urge you to look to the other ways before you go. Many of these organizations, whether they're Little Leagues or AYSOs, they run on very lean margins, and they're very valuable community partners. And I understand we have a lot of travel organizations and national... If the delta is small, coming from user fees, really, really think hard before we get into some of our primarily youth sports organizations. That's maybe not where we want to build too much on.

Yeah, when you look at our overall fee structure, there is actually a number of buckets where local youth is the least... charged. As you go to those adult, national, non-local, those go more. And really, where you're going to see the difference is in those tournament fees, I think, more than any place else. But point well taken, sir. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Seth. Jeff?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation, Steve. I want to go back to Woosh. When that was presented, I've got the feeling it didn't have an enthusiastic audience at the council, but the way you described it sounds like it's a decided mode of transportation within the Great Park, but just in the future.

I wouldn't say it's a decided mode of transportation. It's something that the council has yet to make a final decision on. It's not a decision that needs to be made at this point. Looking at our transit, if you look at the transit planning, you look at the adjacencies within the park, the most important connectivity piece is really from the train station to the park. That's kind of the piece that we need to get to probably sooner rather than later. Interconnectivity in the park, when we looked at using any type of mode of transportation, whether it was a tram or anything else, the cost per user was excessively high in the early years. Really, it doesn't become more effective until you get to a closer to full build-out, you know, post-2030. It's a decision that I think has not been made yet. There's no verdict on it. As I say, we've added some conduits and some light infrastructure that adds a pretty insignificant amount of money to the park to add in now. But that's a decision that's going to be made many, many years from now, I have a feeling. And it's not really up, you know, a lot. We're many councils away from that, I'd say.

Okay. Thank you. The other question I have is about the library pad. What's the timeframe for that and does the library plan need to be solidified and final before you make a pad for the building?

So the library pad, you know, we kind of have an idea of the range of square footage, so we're going to develop a pad to the maximum square footage. You can always trim it off of that. You know, the conservative estimate I would give is 2030. It's certainly possible it could be done a lot sooner than then, but I don't know what's under the concrete. And what we learned in another area of the park is I removed concrete and I found buildings underneath it that had to be removed. And so that just adds a little bit of complexity. So I try to be cautiously optimistic. I'd say 2030 would probably be the outside date that that pad would be ready. Could be ready much earlier than that. The other constraining feature there is the library wasn't an original part of the framework plan, so it's not a funded part of the framework plan at this point in time. We're still kind of doing some analysis on other options where we could find funding for that, how we could get that built. If somebody said, hey, Steve, we have $100 and whatever million to build this thing today, there's always ways to expedite projects to get that done. You could move resources from one part of that demolition and grading project, and we are prioritizing that in the project. The other piece of that is a pad without full utilities is only half useful, and everything flows downhill, so I also have to get the utilities south of that point through the ARTA down to those loop road grid in order to make that fully functional. 2030 is conservative, but certainly it's possible that it could be done even a year or two earlier. Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Jeff. Steve, you know, I think we've pretty much asked most of the questions that could be pertinent tonight. I do have one question. Do you have a guarantee from IRWD for the reclaimed water in the lake?

Yeah, we finally did get to agreement with them recently on that.

Okay, now is this lake, is any part of it necessary for recharge?

So none of it is necessary for recharge. The constraint with reclaimed water is untreated reclaimed water cannot go into stormwater facilities. So it can't go to Agua Chenon or Bee Canyon. And that's kind of why we have that wetland concept where it can take all that rainwater and then it can be pumped into use for the areas around the park for irrigation, kind of like some of the areas in the south end of the park are currently designed.

Okay. So you feel that at your lowest level in anticipation of stormwater flow, you will still have water in the lake full time?

Yeah, it would. I mean, the lake is fairly deep. I mean, if you, and I'm happy to take this group out on a tour, and if you haven't been out there recently, it's fairly deep. Drawing it down, there's a, you know, just at standard when it's, you know, what we would consider full for regular aesthetic purposes, there's almost, you know, two and a half feet of freeboard available in the wetlands to absorb a lot of water before you really even have to start you know really trying to drain that down so um or you're not going to notice it's not going to be dried out ever you know if you had a system where you had a month worth of atmospheric rivers come in it would probably be getting drained as some of the water was coming in because there is a drawdown that can be offloaded into the into the sewer system to get treated and basically repurposed into reclaimed. And those flows are more than sufficient, we think, with RWD concurrence to be able to handle those storm loads.

I may have missed one of the questions, but are you intending to have any recreational use on the lake?

So there would be no skin use. So you couldn't swim in it, for instance. I think there is a restriction on reclaimed water and swimming, but you could have paddle boats, you could have anything that was non-skin contact recreation out there.

Okay. What do you see as your major obstacles that you're facing on your short-term goals?

You know, we are working to deliver a lot of projects in a short time. You know, we have two constraints in the park. One of them is time and one of them is money, kind of like everything in life, right, Chair? And it is to deliver things in a thoughtful way so that we can be ready to build the future pieces. Right now, we hit kind of a sweet spot with the contracts that we just awarded. They all came in under budget, which is fantastic. And some of them came in significantly under budget. We hope that that trend continues. That obviously with some of the market conditions in the world with tariffs and just different world activities happening right now, my biggest concern is that you have some significant price escalations. But so far we've seen everything come in pretty good. That's one piece of it. The other piece is just unknowns. I think in the areas of the park that we've demolished and we're ready to build, there's not a lot of unknowns on there. But when you get to some of the areas that we still need to do a lot of work on, is it four feet of concrete or is it 18 feet of concrete, can make a difference into those timing things. And that timing ultimately creates a potential constraint with the sooner we can get that demolished, the sooner we can get it graded, the sooner we can get it open. And so that's kind of my biggest concerns at this point.

Are there any other questions? Brenda?

Thank you, Chair. Just for clarity purposes, regarding the large amphitheater, because as I was watching the Great Park Board meeting, I guess I wasn't really clear on what the board decided. Because there was mention of changing the size of the amphitheater. Could you, just for clarity purposes, let us explain what the Great Park Board decided?

The Great Park Board ultimately took no action. I think the vote failed, as I recall. The Great Park Board and the City Council had directed in July of 2023, I think it was, to move forward with a 10,000-seat amphitheater. The Board and Council could certainly change that by a vote of those bodies in the future, but the way it's designed right now, that's the capacity that it's designed at.

Okay. And lastly, just because it's easier or it's more cost-effective obviously to plan things ahead of time than mitigate later. For instance, the hot concessions in the Great Park. I remember that went through the community services and it cost the city money versus the developer money when building. Just certain things that weren't perhaps thought through enough. And I think, I don't know when plans started coming to the Great Park or to the commissions, but will all these plans along the way, I just wanted to confirm that they will be coming through the commissions in the Great Park? Which plans do you refer to the as we move along just items in the plant plans in the Great Park whether it's items in the cultural terrace that we're thinking about the amphitheater anything that we've discussed today and

Certainly happy to come back with future updates. Generally, the way the city is organized, the way that the code is organized, a lot of those decisions are taken by the Great Park Board. They're the recommending body for everything. One way or another, that kind of ended up how it was for both use decisions. Obviously, any CEQA addendums would come back to the Planning Commission. Any CEQA supplementals would come back. But as far as approved things, it would really be more in the form of these kind of presentations. But certainly happy to come back with future updates on any items that the commission is interested in.

Yeah, I think just for feedback purposes, from a resident's perspective, that might be prudent before the final plans are approved by the Great Park Board. I know it's not a standing procedural practice to come to the commissions, but if we can get regular presentations like this, that'd be great.

Yeah, the anticipation I have is that I'd be before this commission, at least on a quarterly basis. I think, you know, the park is a large element of the city. It's an important element of the city. Quite candidly, not that many people watch city council meetings. People may be more interested in things happening at the planning commission because... A lot of the things handled here might be more interesting to them or the Community Services Commission. So the anticipation is to be before you and community services and the council on a fairly regular basis as well as we've initiated some quarterly community meetings. So for instance, the next one of those would be on May the 5th. We're still trying to pin down the location. We just had one Monday night. But we're really trying to get more into the community and get more of that feedback kind of where the people are too.

Great. And will the other commissions, are they also hearing presentations like the Finance Commission regarding the Great Park budget?

They have not to this point. So far, you know, this commission and I know community services have both asked for presentations. Finance has not yet asked. Certainly happy to go before them. Again, it's kind of clunky the way the code is because the Finance Commission doesn't actually have an advisory role to the Great Park. just because of the way it's set up. But certainly, you know, if they would like an update, I'm certainly happy to go visit and share the updates.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Steve, I'd like to thank you for the update on the current status of the Great Park. I'd also like to thank my fellow commissioners for the in-depth questions. We welcome you back at any time. You know, We enjoy the update to understand what's happening in the timeline on the Great Park. So thank you very much.

Thank you guys for having me this evening.

Okay, we will move on to public comments. This is the time that the public may make comments on general issues that are not related to any public hearing items on tonight's agenda. Madam Secretary, do we have any public comments?

If anyone on Zoom wishes to speak, now is the time to raise your hand. We will take speakers in the chamber first. Chair, there are no public comments on non-agendized items.

Very good. Thank you very much. We'll move into introductions. Madam Director, are there any introductions tonight?

Thank you, Chair. Just I would also like to formally introduce our new commissioner, Logan Jeffs, who's joining us for his first meeting tonight. And also give a thank you to Director Torelli, who's already made his way out of here.

Yes. Thank you very much. And we all welcome Logan. As part of our team here and we look forward to seeing you on a regular basis. Staff reports?

No staff reports tonight.

Good. Any announcement, committee reports or commission reports? I see a bunch of heads shaking no. Very good. Then we will go into the consent calendar. We have one item on the agenda for this consent calendar, which are the minutes of the December 4th meeting. Boy, that's a long time ago. Where have we been? They're in front of you. Are there any public comments relating to the minutes?

If anyone on Zoom wishes to speak, now is the time to raise your hand. We will take speakers in the chamber first. Chair, there are no public comments on this item.

Very good. Are there any comments or questions by the Commission? Then I will entertain a motion to accept the minutes as presented. I move that we... You guys are all silent. I'll move that we approve the December 4th, 2025 minutes.

I'll second.

All in favor, let's go ahead and vote.

I'm sorry, Chair Pearson. Can I clarify who made the second? I didn't hear.

I think Arnis got it. Arnis.

Thank you. Chair Pearson, the motion to approve the minutes has passed. I'd like to make note that Commissioner Grossman and Commissioner Jeffs has abstained.

Very good. Thank you very much. Now we'll move into Commission Business. We've got the Annual Progress Report. Stephanie, would you please introduce this?

Yes, thank you, Chair. Your first item of business tonight is the 2025 Annual Progress Report for the City of Irvine Housing Element. Presenting tonight is Senior Planner Eric Martin, joined by Principal Planner Chris Chung.

Very good, Eric. Thank you, Chair, and good evening to yourself and members of the Planning Commission. As Stephanie mentioned, tonight I'll be presenting the 2025 Housing Element Annual Progress Report. which summarizes Irvine's housing activity and program implementation for the 2025 program year. I'll begin with a brief overview of the housing elements and related state law requirements. The housing element is a long range policy document that identifies and analyzes the city's existing and projected housing needs. State law requires cities to prepare and submit a housing element annual progress report, or APR, each year by April 1st. And the APR reports on two main things. First, housing production and development activity, including applications submitted, units entitled, building permits issued, and units completed. AND SECOND, IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HOUSING ELEMENT PROGRAMS ADOPTED BY THE CITY TO FACILITATE HOUSING PRODUCTION AND PRESERVE AFFORDABILITY. THE REPORT THAT WE'RE PRESENTING TONIGHT SUMMARIZES IRVINE'S HOUSING PROGRESS DURING 2025, AND IT IS SEPARATE FROM THE GENERAL PLAN ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT BEING PRESENTED BY MY COLLEAGUES LATER THIS EVENING. Tables A and A2 of the APR summarize Irvine's housing development pipeline. And in 2025, the city's residential development applications totaled 8,940 units. Of those, 4,835 units were entitled, 1,411 units received building permits, and 1,052 units completed construction. Table B summarizes Irvine's progress toward meeting its Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA for short, for the 2021 to 2029 planning period. In terms of total units to date, the city has produced 7,442, with a remaining of 16,168. IN ADDITION TO TRACKING HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY, THE ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT ALSO DOCUMENTS THE CITY'S IMPLEMENTATION OF HOUSING ELEMENT PROGRAMS AND OTHER RELATED HOUSING ACTIVITIES. TABLE D WAS PROVIDED AS ATTACHMENT 1, AND IT REPORTS ON THE STATUS OF THE GOALS, POLICIES, AND PROGRAMS OUTLINED IN CHAPTER 8 OF THE HOUSING ELEMENT. AND I'LL HIGHLIGHT SEVERAL OF THE KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS FROM TABLE D LATER IN THE PRESENTATION. The APR also includes Table G, which identifies a seven-acre parcel and a 20-acre parcel located in the Great Park Planning Area to be used for the development of housing, and also includes Table H, which reports that the city designated three sites as exempt surplus lands during the 2025 program year, with two of those being used for the development of housing. This slide summarizes several housing element program accomplishments reported in Table D during 2025. First, through the Irvine Recovery Plan, the city committed $14.5 million toward affordable housing initiatives, including $7 million specifically earmarked for the preservation of existing affordable housing. SECOND, THE CITY CONTINUED ADMINISTERING PROGRAMS THROUGH MULTIPLE STATE FUNDING SOURCES INCLUDING THE PERMANENT LOCAL HOUSING ALLOCATION AND THE HOMELESS HOUSING ASSISTANCE AND PREVENTION PROGRAM WHICH WERE USED TO CONTINUE CITYWIDE PROGRAMS AND ALSO RESULTED IN THE LAUNCH OF A SOCIAL SERVICES PROGRAM TO HELP RESIDENTS ACCESS ADDITIONAL SERVICES AND RESOURCES. IN TERMS OF OUTREACH, STAFF ALSO CONDUCTED OUTREACH WITH AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPERS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS TO DISCUSS HOMELESSNESS SERVICES, PROGRAM AND FUNDING NEEDS, THE IRVINE RECOVERY PLAN GRANT PROGRAM, AND THE ONGOING HOUSING ORDINANCE UPDATE. AND FINALLY HERE, THE CITY ALSO ISSUED LOANS TO THE RESIDENTIAL REHABILITATION PROGRAM, WITH PRESERVATION EFFORTS FOCUSED ON THE MEADOWS MOBILE HOME PARK, A SENIOR COMMUNITY WITH AFFORDABLE UNITS, AND THERE, THE CITY PROVIDED GRANTS OF UP TO $5,000 TO RESIDENTS FOR HEALTH AND SAFETY REPAIRS. Continuing with program accomplishments, in terms of preservation, the city remains actively engaged in preserving existing affordable housing through coordination with owners of publicly assisted housing developments. Another key accomplishment was a 2025 supplement to the Irvine Company MOU, adding approximately 2,900 additional housing units processed under that original framework. And that supplement also included 50 transitional housing vouchers through the Irvine Cares program, where 19 vouchers have been issued, along with additional provided services such as food assistance. Because updates to the general plan and the zoning ordinance were completed toward the final quarter of 2024, 2025 became the first full program year where we actively implemented the city's new land use plan to accommodate additional housing, as well as several policies and zoning tools that were intended to encourage and facilitate affordable housing. OF THOSE, THE IMPORTANT ONES INCLUDED THE RESIDENTIAL INCENTIVE PROGRAM WHICH ALLOWS PROJECTS PROVIDING ENHANCED AFFORDABILITY TO RECEIVE CITY ISSUE DEVELOPMENT INTENSITY VALUES AT NO COST, THUS CREATING A FINANCIAL INCENTIVE FOR FUTURE PROJECTS. ADDITIONALLY, ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS FROM THE GENERAL PLAN UPDATE IS THE RESIDENTIAL MIXED USE OVERLAY, OR RRMU FOR SHORT. THIS SUCCESSFULLY INTRODUCED A STREAMLINED FRAMEWORK FOR HIGHER DENSITY RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT BY SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTENING THE ENTITLEMENT PROCESS. And two examples of that from 2025 are the 426 unit VKCC development, which was approved in four months, and the 1,858 unit development from Irvine Company that was approved in nine months. And in addition to these projects, staff is currently reviewing five development applications received in 2025 that propose approximately 1,100 units. And those projects are also taking advantage of the RMU framework and its incentives. And because the process has been streamlined, they're expected to come before the Planning Commission later this year. Overall, these efforts show how the policies adopted through the housing element and general plan updates are now being implemented and beginning to deliver real housing outcomes, while also highlighting how the city is continuing to make progress toward meeting its existing and projected housing needs. And based on the information presented tonight, staff recommends that the Planning Commission recommend City Council review and the direction of staff to submit the Housing Element Annual Progress Report for 2025. That concludes staff's presentation and we are happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric. I appreciate the presentation and there's a lot of data in the backup. I hope everybody was able to go through it and understand it. I will ask whether or not there are any public comments.

If anyone on Zoom wishes to speak, now is the time to raise your hand. We will take speakers in the chamber first. Chair, there are no public comments on this item.

No comments? Then I will ask my fellow commissioners, starting with Logan, if you have any questions for Eric or Chris.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Eric and Chris. I appreciate the city staff putting together the report. As far as I can tell, it looks complete, accurate, and compliant. Just wanted to check, based on the progress report and any trends that are shown in it, how does it compare to what was initially planned, starting with the eight-year plan and more recent developments with planning?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, your question, just to understand it correctly, how does the... How does the progress compare against estimates from, say, a year, three years, or five years ago?

Sure. Well, the city's definitely producing quite a few housing units, and we're definitely on pace to far exceed the above-moderate category. I think most cities naturally have challenges with the affordable housing income categories, but I would highlight that... For the 2025 period, in terms of applications and entitlements, there are over 1,300 units that are in the pipeline. So I think we're making some good progress there and more to come in 2026.

Thank you. And then the affordable housing piece is one that I noticed it did look a little bit behind plan, the number built and the number permitted versus the number required. Does this become a compliance issue at any point or is there a concern either in the near future or longer term?

No, I would say the primary importance really is to ensure that the city has the mechanisms in place to facilitate affordable housing and also the zoning that would accommodate that density. So we're definitely, we have that in place. We're kind of at the mercy of the market really.

Commissioner Jessify can just add as well. One thing, going back to your initial question, speaking about how it compares to prior years, one of the things that we should highlight is the fact that the general plan update, the RMU, that was all put in place in the latter half of 2024. So again, this is sort of the first full year where we're seeing the effects of how implementing that will deliver units. So to sort of answer your question in the upcoming years, As Chris said, we have a lot of units that are in the pipeline. In fact, right now we have about 4,000 that are under review that would be entitled within, hopefully within 2026. And then, so I guess that just sort of speaks to the differences between prior years and moving forward is the fact that we're now having these policies and the zoning ordinance update and the general plan update to facilitate more housing.

Understood. And then the report mentioned that there's currently no net loss. Is there anything in the report that could indicate that there's any risk of that at any point in the future between now and 2028?

Currently, no. The city staff is currently actively monitoring the loss. Right now, there's adequate buffer in all income categories, so that's the important thing is we're monitoring and forecasting out with projects in the pipeline, and there are no issues at the moment.

Great. And then just understanding the process more broadly, so this is submitted to the state, and then is there any follow-up? Do they provide Feedback, comments, what is the process after the report is submitted?

They do not provide direct feedback on the housing report itself.

I can go ahead and answer that, Marika Poynter, Chief of Planning and Policy. Typically what happens is if they, if HCD, for example, wants to discuss future policies with us, for example, all the timelines when we went through this process were estimates. So if, for whatever reason, the market is creating a situation where we can't get a policy through, we reevaluate that and we have constant discussions. KIND OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH HCD THE OTHER THING THAT YOU'LL SEE POSTED AND THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT RECEIVES THE MOST PRESS AND IS PUBLISHED IN LIKE THE OC REGISTER AND OTHER NEWSPAPERS THROUGHOUT THE STATE IS THE STATE WILL RELEASE A HOUSING REPORT CARD COME LIKE MAY, JUNE-ISH BASED ON THE INFORMATION THEY RECEIVE, AND THEY'LL DO A COMBINED GRADE FOR THE CITY OR JURISDICTION, AND THEN BY EACH INCOME CATEGORY. SO YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO A SEARCH AND FIND PREVIOUS YEARS, BUT THAT'S PROBABLY THE MOST, I THINK, WELL-KNOWN OUTPUT THAT COMES FROM THE STATE AFTER THIS PROCESS.

VERY HELPFUL. THOSE ARE MY QUESTIONS. THANK YOU BOTH.

Thank you, Logan. Seth.

Chris and Eric, thank you very much. A very comprehensive report. I know a tremendous amount of work went into this and to the accuracy of it. Not a ton of questions, but I guess I wanted to first talk about the challenges that we'll face on the affordable side. We've seen a lot of developers who have chosen to pay fees in lieu of actually building the housing. What do you foresee potentially with what's in the pipeline and going forward around that issue and efforts to be able to actually build the affordable that we're looking to build?

I can take that, Commissioner. Yes, I agree. Our current in lieu fee is woefully low. We are currently STUDYING WHAT AN APPROPRIATE FEE WOULD BE. IT'S UNDER REVIEW NOW. WE'RE RUNNING A FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS OF WHAT THAT FEE COULD BE. NEXT STEPS WOULD BE STAKEHOLDER OUTREACH, RUNNING THROUGH FINANCE COMMISSION, RUNNING THROUGH PLANNING COMMISSION, THEN TO COUNCIL. SO IT'S BEEN QUITE SOME TIME SINCE OUR IN-LIFE FEE HAS BEEN UPDATED. IT'S DEFINITELY WORTH TAKING ANOTHER LOOK BECAUSE, YES, THAT IS AN EASY WAY FOR A DEVELOPER TO SATISFY THEIR AFFORDABLE HOUSING. THE REQUIREMENT IS TO PAY THAT IN-LIEU FEE.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. I'M VERY PLEASED TO HEAR THAT. I BELIEVE THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL THINGS WE NEED TO LOOK AT GOING FORWARD. One related question is, you know, we are in the first full year of our RMU and the overlay that we've developed. It's more of a comment, I guess. I think as we get somewhere maybe around the middle of this year and we see all the new stuff that's coming through the pipeline, we need to really analyze how well that RMU developed, that overlay developed versus what we planned versus what actually is achieved. And especially in the IBC district and looking at that and making sure that we are not creating urban deserts or as such. It's not really a question, but just looking at the pipeline, looking at the fees, I think that we're going to have to come back as this commission and as a Dialogue to looking at that again and making sure that it is achieving that what we what we desired it to set out To do in terms of achieving our affordable our targets and overall housing and affordability So it's not really a question if you have a feedback on I'd be happy I'd love to hear it But something that's sort of been in the back of my mind and as very much as I read this report So, but that's all for me. Thank you very much Thank you Seth

Jeff? Thank you, Eric and Chris, for the presentation. My only question is, have we thought of any ideas to incentivize more extremely low-income units, or is that something that would have to be handled by, like, the Irvine Land Trust outside of a private developer?

That's not something that we've looked at recently, but we certainly could start examining it at some point since that is a new category within that annual progress report.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you.

Raj. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Eric and Chris, for the presentation. Whether it is commercial density bonuses and student housing density bonuses, are those granted in 2025? And if they're limited, does that affect the low-income housing production?

Could you repeat your question one more time?

So with the no commercial density bonuses in the student housing density bonuses granted in 2025, there is none from what I know. Does that adversely affect production of any of the housing elements for ARENA and especially for low-income housing?

I can address that. No, the two are not linked. Basically what those two tables are asking is if we had applications for either commercial density bonus or student housing, we would need to report those. We just didn't have applications for those this year.

Oh, I see. Okay. No, no further questions. I did want to point out that there's no shortfalls of site capacities and mixed use. That's evident in IBC when we're transitioning a lot of the residential or at least commercial offices to residential, and we see that more and more prevalent. So, yeah, no further questions, but that's just my comment. Thank you.

Thank you, Raj Arnas.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff, for the presentation. I just have two questions. Can you go back and I think you might have mentioned it, but how many residential units does the City Hall anticipate bringing over to this commission within the end of the year for review?

So there are currently five applications that I can speak to that have come in under the RRMU overlay, and that totaled, as of right now, it could change because it's all under review, right? But as of right now, that was approximately 1,100 units.

And how many of those are, like, affordable or...

They would have to show compliance with our affordable housing requirements. So generally that requires a minimum 15%. However, it depends on whether or not the developer chooses to satisfy it through an in-live fee. So we'll have a better idea once we get closer to presenting that.

Sounds good. And my last question is, I understand the city owns some parcels still, and it's been discussed about using those parcels for housing. I believe one of it's like the TOD site near the train tracks in the Irvine train station. How far has staff in here has gone into exploring that possibility? Because it is city owned and We don't have to wait, per se, like a developer. Yeah, thank you.

Yes, I can touch on that briefly. So there are several city-owned properties that we're kind of looking at for affordable development. I think the first that would... come online are actually at Gateway Village. There are two affordable lots at that location. So those would be the first to come online. And that's about 280 some odd units in that area. There is the Crescent site that the city got in the land swap with Five Points. There's going to be an affordable component there. There is another potential site that was related to the original MOU with the Irvine Company that staff is doing due diligence on right now. And that would be an entirely affordable site as well. So those are underway. So those are forthcoming. I don't have exact timelines, though.

No, thank you. Glad to hear that you're contemplating those sites that the city owns. And I believe we could do a lot more to impact housing.

Thank you, Arnis. Brenda.

Thank you, Chair. I have no questions. Just thank you to staff for working so hard to keep us compliant and the state happy. Thank you.

Thank you. I've got one question. First, I want to say, Eric and Chris, thank you very much for the presentation. Stephanie, how comfortable are you in this report, sending it on to city council and on to the state.

I am very comfortable because I've read every line of it. But I do want to point out that I want to send the copy attached to the errata. So please note that in your motion.

That has to be part of the motion. Thank you. The errata, yes. Okay, well then, you know, This is an issue that has to be done by a specific time frame. You've presented it to us. And I will look at Seth because he's got another Quickie.

Real quick one. Could you just elaborate, because I remember hearing about this a year ago, and I read it in the report, but about the issue or the dispute around UCI housing and how that's addressed with the state. Can you just give a little bit more color to that for us?

Sure, happy to. So if you picked up on that, there is a note in the table that says the city and UCI issued a joint letter to HCD it was probably two years ago we wrote that letter, basically asking the HCD to count certain types of university housing as dwelling units that would count towards the arena. Right now they do not count that at all. So we never got a response. So it's been a couple years now. We're asking them to reconsider again. I have a meeting with a counterpart at UCI again to kind of restart these talks coming up this month. There's going to be a renewed push I BELIEVE THE MAYOR IS GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT IT AS WELL WHEN HE GOES UP TO SACRAMENTO. WE REALLY THINK THAT THERE'S STUDENTS IN UNITS, THOSE SHOULD BE HOUSING UNITS. THAT COUNT. SO IF HDD FINALLY AGREES, THOSE UNITS WOULD BE COUNTED AS DWELLING UNITS FOR THE LARGER SCAG AREA, AND THEY WOULD BASICALLY BE DEDUCTED FROM THE TOTAL ALLOCATION FOR THE PLANNING AREA, WHICH WOULD HOPEFULLY REDUCE THE TOTAL ALLOCATION FOR SCAG, WHICH WOULD IN TURN REDUCE THE ALLOCATION FOR IRVINE. SO THAT'S THE GOAL.

Has any other region had what we're asking for to be considered with the UC, for example? Yes. Okay, makes sense. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Okay, then we've got a recommended action to... Recommend City Council review and direct study of Irvine Community Development staff to submit the 2025 Housing Element Annual Progress Report, including the errata, to the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. Do I hear a motion? Here I second. I will take the motion from Branda and the second from Raj. Set us up to vote.

Chair Pearson, the motion has passed unanimously.

Very good. I appreciate that. And we will go now on to item number four. Director Frady, would you introduce THIS ITEM.

THANK YOU. OUR NEXT ITEM IS THE 2025 ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT FOR THE CITY OF IRVINE GENERAL PLAN. JOINING US TO PRESENT IS ASSISTANT PLANNER SHAVON GUMMIPAK-MAGUIRE AND PRINCIPAL PLANNER NICK MALONEY.

VERY GOOD. I THANK YOU. I WELCOME YOU SHAVON. Let's proceed with the... Good evening, members of the Planning Commission.

The item before you this evening is the 2025 General Plan Annual Progress Report. State law requires cities to prepare an annual progress report on their general plan and submit it to the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation by April 1st of each year as a routine reporting action. This report summarizes the status of the general plan's objectives and progress on implementation during the 2025 calendar year, with the exception of the housing element, which was reported earlier tonight, and separately from this report. The city adopted the current 2045 general plan in 2024. This is the first year that the 2045 general plan has been used as the basis of the general, as the annual progress report. Examples of the general plan objectives include the land use elements, which aim to ensure growth maintains a balance between residential and non-residential development and create a visually attractive city. This was implemented through approvals of residential and non-residential master plans, implementation of the community preference policy, adoption of the economic development blueprint, and the 2025 code update for the objective design standards, all of which satisfy the land use element objectives. The safety element objectives identify actions the City must take to reduce the severity of disasters which was implemented through existing plans such as the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan and the Emergency Operations Plan. Additionally, the open space and conservation element objectives encourage participation between the Natural Communities Conservation Plan and the Habitat Conservation Plan. The City is continuing to fulfill these objectives through its ongoing participation in these programs. In summary, the General Plan Annual Progress Report tracks the status and implementation of the City's General Plan objectives, which occurred in 2025, through various projects, programs, and policy documents. Therefore, staff recommends Planning Commission recommend City Council review of the General Plan Objective, sorry, as the City Council review of the General Plan Annual Progress Report and direct staff to submit the Annual Progress Report to the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation. This concludes staff's presentation. We are available to answer any questions.

Thank you very much Madam Secretary, do we have any public comments?

If anyone on zoom wishes to speak now is the time to raise your hand we will take speakers in the chamber first Chair there are no public comments on this item

VERY GOOD. THEN WE'LL MOVE ON TO MY FELLOW COMMISSIONERS FOR COMMENT OR QUESTIONS TO STAFF. JEFF?

THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION, BUT I DON'T HAVE ANY QUESTIONS.

VERY GOOD. THEN I'LL MOVE TO RAJ.

THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION. NO QUESTIONS FROM MY SIDE AS WELL. THANK YOU.

SETH? THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE PRESENTATION. NO QUESTIONS.

No questions, but I just want to thank staff for all their hard work in putting this together.

Logan?

Sure, I'll ask a couple of questions. Thank you, Chair. So I know this is the first year reporting for the 2045 plan, so I imagine what's presented in this is probably tracking pretty closely to when that was put together, but anything in this progress report that... that kind of alludes to areas that may need to be refined or amended in the general plan?

The general plan annual progress report is tracked based on the reporting year. So some projects might be ongoing where some have specific target dates. And so it's really dependent on the reporting year to see why some might be ongoing, why some have been final, why some might not be started due to limitations.

Okay. And then just in the objectives that were outlined in the appendix report that was shared, are there any that are proving to be more challenging or any that might be ahead of schedule?

Again, it would be dependent on the reporting year. So if some are ahead of schedule, it could be an ongoing project that might continue into years forthcoming.

And I can expand on that a little bit too, because this is a brand new general plan and these are kind of brand new policies. We're kind of in the very first year of reporting on them. So we're kind of just getting started. So that's why you see most of them are still in progress because the very first year we've reported on them. So as next year comes around, you'll see a lot of these are starting to close out and be complete. And the following year, more will be complete, more will be complete. So that's why a lot of these are still in progress.

Gotcha. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Brenda.

No questions. Thank you, staff.

Very good. I would like to compliment staff in total for the presentation and for accomplishing a number of objectives in the 2045 general plan. I think we've We are in a new phase. We've got a new plan. We've got new objectives. And I think we're moving forward in the right direction. So Stephanie, thank you, your team, doing a very good job. And at this time, we've got a recommendation for City Council to review and direct the staff to submit the 2025 General Plan Annual Progress Report to the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation. Do I have a motion?

I'll move to approve the recommended action.

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Set us up to vote.

Chair Pearson, the motion has passed unanimously.

Very good. That concludes item four. We'll now move into item five, which is the commission reorganization. At this time, I will hand the gavel over to our director and allow her to proceed.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to declare nominations open for chairperson. And I would like to take nominations. And self-nominations are OK.

So right now, it's for Chair Pearson to remain.

We are taking nominations for chair.

Okay, I would second that. I would nominate Chair Pearson to continue as chair if I can get a second.

We don't need a second, we're just looking for nominations.

That's my nomination.

Are there any other nominations?

I would like to nominate Commissioner Stark for consideration for chair.

I also would like to self-nominate for chair if I am the vice chair, I've served two ACTING AS CHAIR LAST YEAR, MAY AND JUNE, MAY 1ST AND JUNE 2ND. SO I FEEL THAT IN TERMS OF SORT OF THE GROWTH PLAN THAT I WANT, I THINK I WOULD SELF-NOMINATE. SO IF I COULD GET A SECOND, I WOULD, YOU KNOW, OR NOT A SECOND. NO SECOND.

ANY OTHER NOMINATIONS? OK, we'll close the nominations. And we will vote on each nominee separately. We'll start with the first person nominated.

What are we going to do?

Director Frady, would you like me to do a nomination for each, or would you like me to call on each commissioner and they can tell me who they would like to vote for in one vote?

We should go each one that was nominated.

OK.

OK, I was not anticipating three. Sorry about that. Let's do a roll call vote, and we'll start at the end. Commissioner, yes?

Can you just clarify when you say roll? Is it an up, down, yes, no for each individual? Is that what you're?

Yes. We're going to start with Jeff Pearson. Commissioner Jeffs, we'll start with you.

Sure. And just to further clarify, you can only cast a yes vote for one nominee?

So the short story is there's a lot of ways to skin this cat. We were going to vote individually on each one nominated. I think the best approach might be to go down the line and vote out of the three who would you like selected. But again, there are a lot of ways to skin this cat, so we can do it a lot of different ways. I think that might be the most efficient way.

not individually, just who you want out of the three. Okay, we're going to change the plan. So just who is your vote for chair? We'll go down the line.

Sure. Chair Pearson.

Okay.

Commissioner Stark. Commissioner Stark.

Pearson.

Wait, just real quick. I had two options. I can do primary and secondary, or we're just focused?

Just vote for one.

Vote for one.

myself commissioner stark stark all right we have a winner congratulations chair stark thank you thank you for the congratulations i'll now turn this over to chair stark and you will run selection of a vice chair i'd like to nominate brando lynn So, Chair, you'd ask for any other nominations.

Are there any other nominations for Vice Chair?

I'd like to continue. Vice Chair.

Any further nominations? Can we do a roll call vote for Vice Chair?

Commissioner Stark.

Commissioner Lin.

Commissioner Lin.

Commissioner Batia, I don't know.

Commissioner Jeffs.

I'll respect the chair's direction. I think Roger would do a fantastic job as well, but Commissioner Lin.

Commissioner Grossman.

Commissioner Lin.

Commissioner Dela Cusack.

Commissioner Lin.

Commissioner Bhatia. Myself. Commissioner Pearson.

Bhatia.

With four votes in favor, Vice Chair Lin.

Congratulations for doing that on your first try this time.

Jeff, weren't you supposed to orchestrate the vice chair, like you were supposed to speak? I don't know. I thought that was, no. You were supposed to talk and say, okay, now we vote, because I thought that's what happens.

Didn't we do that?

Oh, you did. Okay, gotcha. I think I did it.

That was okay, right?

Yes.

Okay, now we adjourn the meeting?

Yes.

At 7.01 p.m.

And we will be back for your next regular scheduled meeting on March 19th.