Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Progress. To the April 28 meeting of the Test and Planning Commission, the time is 06:01. Tonight, the Pledge of Allegiance will be done by Commissioner Higuchi.

Thank you, Chair Mason. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready, begin. 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. Please be seated.

All right, Beer, do you want to do roll call? Chair, let the record reflect all commissioners with the exception of commissioner Kozak are present. Thank you. Alright. So we'll move into public, input. If you're here in person, please fill out a request to speak form and hand it to Vera. And we'll invite you up to the podium. And if you're watching via Zoom, you can raise your hand in the webinar and you'll be called to speak. And so this is on topics that are not on tonight's agenda. Vera, do we have any public comments?

We have John Gray who has his hand raised in Zoom. Alright. Go ahead, John.

Hi. I've already let the city and other departments know about this, but we've been dealing with a business called Enhanced Health Group, a nonprofit. It was approved to be used as an outpatient procedure. They have about 40 people who have various conditions from mental health to addiction. We're still dealing with them going around trespassing on our properties, smoking marijuana a thousand feet from a youth center.

I just want the planning commission to also know about this because even though they may have avoided a conditional use permit, I still feel very wrong that this type of business is causing a detriment to the community around us. And so I'm not sure if it's the planning commission or city council, but I definitely request that this approval be reviewed and brought back so that the community actually has some input in the matter. Thank you.

Thank you, sir, for taking the time. We'll pass that on to staff. Alright. The next item on the agenda is the consent calendar, and all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. Without discussion, persons wishing to speak regarding consent calendar matters should file a request to speak form with the Planning Commission Secretary, Vera.

So tonight we have the approval of meeting minutes from March 24, and the recommendation is that the Planning Commission approve the minutes of March 24, as provided. And Vera, are there any public comments on the consent calendar tonight? Chair, there are none. Thank you. Great. So, I will take a motion from my colleagues and a second.

I'll make the motion to approve as drafted.

Second.

Great. Thank you. Vera, can we go ahead and do a roll call vote? Commissioner Zugolo? Aye. Higuchi?

Aye. Douthit? Aye.

And Chair Mason? Aye. Motion passes four zero one. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Tonight, we do not have any public hearing items, but we do have two items on the agenda, that are regular business. And the first one is the Southwest Tustin Residential Parking Study. And the request is to discuss the findings and recommendations from a city initiated on street parking study of the Southwest Tustin neighborhoods. And the recommendation is the Planning Commission receive and file this item, but first we have a presentation from senior planner George Maldonado. George?

Thank you for the introduction, chair. Good evening, planning commissioners. Tonight, it's my pleasure to share with you what we've done as far as the Southwest parking study goes, some findings, and some recommendations that came out of all of it. But before we dive into kind of the meat and potatoes of the study itself, just wanted to share where we started, what we've done, and what our next steps are. So this was a city initiated council directed project that kicked off in July of this past year.

And since then, we've done a number of things, including on the technical side, gathering some actual data as well as community engagement. So we've engaged in interviews with area residents, drafted a variety of outreach materials in English and Spanish, put on community events, public events in English and Spanish, etcetera. So of course, we collected this data, we reviewed it, we refined it, and from it, we came to a number of recommendations, which we're here to share with you tonight, and then tentatively, going to share that with the city council on May 19, so next month. So the study area, which I call Southwest Tustin, is the area that you see on your screen. This is roughly the area around McFadden and Newport.

So that's South of the 5 Freeway and Main Street, West Of Newport Avenue, roughly North of McFadden, and then east of the city boundary behind Williams Street to the left of the image here. And this is the same area with a little bit more information overlaid on top. So I wanted to give some context as to the neighborhood that we are going to be discussing. If we use the 50 5 Freeway to roughly split the area in half, the western area or the left leftmost area is one of the densest neighborhoods in Tustin and actually in Orange County. It's in the top 1% of census tracts by population density in the entire county, with about 30,000 people per square mile.

And the area to the right of the 55 Freeway is in the top 10% by population density, about 18,000 people per square mile. So we're talking about very dense residential conditions. And I'll get into a few more kind of factoids a little bit later in the presentation. But first of all, what do we do? What did we study?

How did we study it? As I mentioned earlier, we did a number of things that can generally be organized into data collection. So we actually chose two weeks over the summer, one in August and one in September, before and after school started, to go out to the neighborhood and count the number of cars that were parked on the street at various times of day. So from five a. All the way to nine p.

M, we had various sweeps of the area counting the cars on the street. We also had drones take photos of what was observed in the study area, both behaviors but also just generally the conditions. And of course, we went out there ourselves to lay eyes on it. We also did a number of community engagement activities. Like I mentioned, we had two workshops.

We had one in person at the Tustin Library in September, and then we had a virtual workshop in October, both of which were provided in English and Spanish. We had a survey that went out to area residents in English and Spanish, and we engaged in a number of one on one intensive interviews, with area stakeholders, so not just residents, but also apartment managers, HOA representatives, etcetera. So we're going to dive into some of the data that was collected. What you see before you is, on average, on a Wednesday, how much of the parking on the street was being used. So again, this is an average of all the data that was collected for that entire day.

But generally, you can see that the vast majority of the blocks in the study area had at least 70% of their parking filled up, with about half of them much more than that, more than 85% of the on street parking being used. Now, of note and outlined in the blue box that you see there is what looks like an outlier. So that blue box there is actually a predominantly single family neighborhood, whereas the rest of the study area is predominantly multifamily. But also notably, this single family neighborhood is one of the only neighborhoods in the study area that is participating in the permit parking program. So we see less than 50% of the on street parking in that neighborhood being used on average on a Wednesday.

Now, same idea, but now we're looking, on average, on a Saturday. You can tell and I'll just refer back to the previous slide. You can see kind of the change here. Now the vast majority of block faces see more than 85% of parking being used up at any given point in time. And that 85% number, it's kind of a rule of thumb in the parking technical world, where when parking is being used up more than 85%, that's kind of what's deemed definitely a problem.

And even the single family neighborhood, can see parking usage goes up quite a bit, up into the yellow category. So that was a glimpse of some of the data that was collected. Now here is a bullet point summary of some of the themes that came up from the community engagement that was done. So again, this is all from interviews and direct interfacing with residents and apartment managers in the area. So of note, much of the multifamily in this neighborhood provides one parking space per unit, per household.

And that's particularly notable, especially coupled with the fact that much of the housing stock in this study area was built around the 1960s. So it was all part of the post World War II housing boom and what perhaps at the time seemed like a very reasonable parking requirement, one car per household, does not reflect the reality of contemporary household conditions. In other words, the city changed in the past sixty years. Household sizes are increasing. Many residents reported being part of multigenerational households where they have maybe teenage children that need to drive, they themselves drive, they have their own parents, grandparents living with them that might need a car.

So you can see where the kind of structural mismatch between the private parking that's provided by the apartments is not matching up exactly with just the realities of households today. Other quick little notes from residents some of them reported either themselves or they observed neighbors just not using their garages for parking, using them for storage, and as well as they shared their experiences, just the realities of living with the parking situation in the neighborhood. Some residents reported having to walk upwards of twenty minutes or about a mile to from their parking space to home, and that walk feeling maybe not as safe or comfortable as it could for a number of reasons, whether that's lack of lighting, street lighting, or maybe the conditions of the sidewalks themselves could be a little bit better, and a number of other things. Notably, what came up multiple times unprompted was area residents were willing to pay to park at nearby shopping centers if it meant that they would have a guaranteed convenient accessible parking space. So so that came up quite a bit.

And lastly, on this note, there was a desire for generally more parking enforcement, specifically having to do with vehicles that have been parked on the street beyond the seventy two hour limit that the city and statewide has in place. Generally, those cars are just staying there, they're not being towed or otherwise removed is what was reported. So we have the data. We have the feedback from the community. So we have about five big findings from all of this.

Number one, no brainer, there's more cars than there are spaces in this part of the city. The demand just far exceeds certainly the supply on private property. As I mentioned, one parking space per unit on average. But as as we saw by just how congested street parking was, there there's not enough street parking to accommodate. Number two, there's a gap in enforcement, as was mentioned.

Cars that are stored on the public right of way, not being removed or etcetera. Number three and number four kind of go hand in hand. The existing permit parking program that the city has is underused. Most people just have no idea what it is, how to be part of it, how it might address this exact condition that we're seeing here. By and large, most eligible blocks in the study area have not petitioned to participate in the program.

But that bleeds into number four. Perhaps that's because there is a big communication gap on the city's end, whether that's the material the promotional materials explaining the program or advocating for program, they're not reaching everybody, they're not whether that's just in general not getting to them or it is, but it's not being provided in other languages like Spanish and others that might be better received. And lastly, key finding number five, there could be some improvement to some of the public infrastructure that's out there, like I mentioned, lighting, sidewalk conditions. And also what came up multiple times, people were very supportive of what I call T markers or L markers, basically paint on the street that delineates where a parking space is so that parking on the street is a little bit more orderly and efficient. People were very supportive of that.

Some of that exists in part of the neighborhood, but generally folks would like to see that kind of proliferated throughout. So from those findings, there are a handful of recommendations that staff is putting forward. I won't go into too much detail on all of these, but generally, it's to increase parking enforcement, it's to promote the permit parking program, restricting oversized vehicles, like work vehicles, commercial trucks that are sometimes parked on the street as well, providing resources in Spanish, providing an income calibrated permit so that not every household is necessarily having to pay a flat fee, something that's a little bit more dialed into households and household income. Improving shared parking agreement options, so that could look like something that may potentially come before the Planning Commission if City Council decides to go this way, but facilitating, linking, or the agreements, bringing people to the table, whether that's commercial property owners and nearby apartment managers so that their residents can park on the commercial lots, installing street lighting, installing the space markings that I mentioned, and generally staying on top of collecting data to ensure that whatever policies or actions we move forward with are actually addressing the situation and being able to pivot on what works and what doesn't.

And that wraps up all the information that I have for you tonight. I am joined by representatives from the police department as well as public works should you have any questions in that realm. Thank you.

Thank you, George. All right. So, I'm curious if anyone has any additional questions for staff or okay. Go ahead.

So what's the total population size of that neighborhood?

I don't have that number off the top of my head. I would have to take a closer look at that and get back to you.

Okay. And by the way, great study. Thank you for presenting today, and thanks for everybody who helped put that together. I think just something that called out to me is 31 surveys, 18 interviews in areas that are 30,000 people per mile, right? A little low participation. I get we can put some feelers out there, but some way we need to represent what everybody's going through. A lot of the things that that called out to me, right, like, I like some of these ideas like the parking agreement options, the lighting, the curb mace, and the enforcement. But I think some of the other things, just my 2¢, might be the fundamental problem is there are more cars than there are spots, right? And none of the recommendations really did anything to incentivize not owning a car. Even your presentation, you mentioned like need to drive or need to do things.

What I might be curious in this study, and I think it's really relevant as we approve more and more development throughout Tustin, right? We know that some of the rules, it's parked people come, they talk about parking, they're worried about it, is what can we do to create incentives for people to not drive, not own cars? The study didn't really address where are people going. Are there easy routes for them to get to other places that we could figure out what can we do to help get them there without driving? I think a couple other things that called out to me, right, You know, people are trying to save their spots with motorcycles or whatnot.

I I think what the the pamphlet we are provided showed that we might wanna have dedicated motorcycle spots. I think that's a good thing, but it could also be a bad thing if a lot more people try to get motorcycles or e bikes, and then those spots run out, right? Even though they take less room for cars, we might might be doing ourselves a disservice. Or even the t and the l markings, while as a driver, I think it's great to to have those nice wider spaces that might even impact it more as we make those, you know, if we delineate the spaces, we might reduce the capacity even more. But it's a tough problem, right?

I think the last finding about we just have to keep working at it is a big thing. And I'd be really curious if more people came and said, well, what do they think is the solution rather than relying on us to put out the best thing? What was recommended about enforcement? I think that has to be number one. Right? About what can we do to say that cars that aren't in use, aren't operable, that aren't moving, what can we do to clear those out so the people who are working all night don't have to come home and worry about can they they safely get to their home after a thirty minute walk. It's a really tough problem. I thank you guys for bringing it up, and I hope that we keep this conversation ongoing.

Commissioner Gaffett.

I have a couple of quick questions. What is the process for a neighborhood to enact a permit program?

So neighborhood residents need to get about 65 of the neighbors on that block altogether to kind of authorize signing on to the parking permit program. And there are some kind of more nuances there about just how that shakes out exactly. But but generally, 65% of of a block needs to sign on a petition. They submit it to the city, and then they're able to obtain permits in a nutshell.

Is that the only way that a neighborhood can obtain a permit program?

Yeah. If you don't mind. I have Kira, our principal transportation engineer from Public Works Great. Who can better answer that question. Thank you.

Hi. Good evening, chair chairperson and then commissioner. Yeah. To answer your question, yes. That's our current adopted permit parking guideline.

If the if the if they are already the area already in the existing established permit district, which for the the study area they are, then they can come to our public works front counter and obtain the the application. And then we will let them know what the area they need to collect the signature from, and, they need to get a consensus from for, 65% of their neighborhood in order to, move forward with the permit.

So can you say one part of that again? Does the city distinguish areas that are eligible for this permit program, or is anywhere other than an HOA, of course, anywhere in the city available for a permit program?

So currently, we do have a number of district identified, I believe, was back in 2021 or 2022, and that was approved by the council. And we draw the boundary. And at that at that time, there was also a study. And the consultant we work with the consultant to identify the district boundary for each district. And anyone in those district can come to public works and then apply for a permit parking. But the condition is they need to get support by their their neighbor.

So those neighborhoods that are not currently permitted, can the city just enact a permit program?

We can.

We have

to. And how does that work if they're renters in multiple different apartment complexes? Do they have to get sign off or a majority what was it? 65% from each resident within those different apartment complexes?

Correct. Yeah.

Interesting. Mhmm. And that wouldn't necessarily guarantee that each resident received a permit. It would just mean that the area because, like we said, there's more there could be more residents than parking spots available. So how would that work? Would it be on a first come, first serve?

It's still first come, first serve. Yeah. But at least we will ensure there are the outsider of this area will not get use these parking spaces.

Interesting.

Chair, if I may add a little bit of color to that, and Keira, please correct me if I'm wrong. But if a neighborhood chooses to kind of activate a parking permit system in their neighborhood, we do have established costs associated with those permits. It's not that some people won't be able to get permits if they live there. If you live there, you can get a permit. And I think it starts at $25 and $50 $75 And one of the recommendations from staff is that for this neighborhood, if we were to institute if the residents were to institute a parking program, we would look at potentially adjusting those costs to be more affordable.

But the idea is that someone that doesn't live there wouldn't be able to stay overnight. It's not a silver bullet. They can still be there during the day. There's set hours under which this is enforced. But anyone that lives there would be eligible to get a permit.

Fair

enough. Very good. So the low income permit, that was one of the suggestions. Would that mean that if you were low income, those permit fees could be lowered based on your income?

That is one of our recommendations. It is not set up that way currently in our program. So that would be an amendment to the program that would need to be be analyzed and figure out how we could do that and bring that forth for the city council approval. But, yes, that is one of our recommendations that we look at a reduction in cost for permits.

Very good. Sounds good. I mean, my own other thoughts, clearly, people are staying there on Saturdays during the day. I could not agree more with commissioner Gullow on alternative infrastructure because it seems like once people get parking spots, they don't wanna leave. So I would encourage more bike infrastructure, more mobility infrastructure in the area as well.

Longtime champion of that because it seems like, you know, I think this is gonna be a problem. We can't add more street for street parking. But what we can offer is once you do find that spot, although it may be further away than desired, it's a lot easier to move within the area. You know, you can ride your bike over to Stater Brothers or over to the other grocery stores so you don't have to lean on your car as much. So I agree as far as the infrastructure improvements, but I think we just need more mobility options in the area to keep people out of their cars. So that's it for my thoughts.

Thank you, chair.

A question for staff. But just to confirm, city council cannot unilaterally enact a permit program in this area. They they there has to be whatever statutory with a 60% of or some number for there to be a per a parking permit program enacted?

Commissioner Hercuchi, if I may, under our existing program, that is how it's set up. Mhmm. Could the council adopt a different program or make a different decision? Yes, that would be under their purview to do so. We're not recommending that at this time. So one of the recommendations in there is that we would institute a different type of parking program that is city led, and we'd make up whatever rules seemed appropriate. And that, to staff, felt a little heavy handed to start with, since we do have a permit program that has been adopted by council, that advertising that, talking to the residents about that, determining whether or not there really is interest in that would be a first step.

So this is a receiving file for the Planning Commission. Contemplated actions that city council could take would be I guess it looks like priority might be more enforcement, financing more enforcement, and communication.

Yes. There's a lot of if then in this study. And yes, enforcement is a very big part of that, and to some degree low hanging fruit, because we do understand that there are vehicles that are not operable or aren't moved very often. We've heard that people park from the adjoining Santa Ana neighborhoods sometimes. So overnight enforcement, those types of things, if there were a parking permit program, we would unlock further tools for enforcement under a parking permit program. But yes, so it's very kind of one step at a time. But enforcement is a big piece of it.

Got it. I see Tustin PDs here. I fear that my questions to you, Alexa, you know, spurred them to to spend their evening here with us. So I I will I will ask you a couple questions if you don't if you don't mind or questions related to enforcement. What are we seeing in this area for traffic or traffic incidents or other issues related that directly or indirectly may be related to the this parking issue?

Sure, sir. My name is captain Arzadi. I'm with Tustin PD. I oversee the traffic bureau, and I brought my traffic sergeant with you as well. So in regard to traffic violations or collisions, we're not seeing a significant increase in collisions there. It's primarily resulting with the parking concerns that we're discussing here today. There's too many residents and not enough parking spots, and it's been a long standing problem that we've dealt with as a police department. And we agree. We've met with staff, city staff. We concur with a lot of their recommendations.

This is a very broad issue. Our element, the way we process this stuff is we have the enforcement, we have the education, and the engineering component, which was all brought up by mister Maldonado here. We're the enforcement element. I'll be happy to discuss any of that. Obviously, the education element, I believe he hit that as well as far as educating the residents and what they can do about permit parking. And the engineering comes into play with the T markings that he suggested or bike pathways for them to use alternative resources for transportation. So overall, this report was pretty pretty in-depth and and we agree with the the findings in it or the recommendations going forward.

We we don't see more incidents of kids like bolting in between parked cars and getting hit or hurt or incidents related because of the school there. I'm sure there's some drop off and pickup issues. Are you seeing conflict with people fighting over parking spaces? I I don't know.

There are quality of life issues, not necessarily just parking, but quality of life issues in regard to pedestrians in the roadway. There were laws that were enacted just to kind of stay on track where jaywalking is no longer a crime in the state of California. So unfortunately, weren't able to force those types of matters. You did hit a good point, sir, in regard to Heideman Elementary being in that area and causing when there's drop off in pickup time, that definitely impacts the area. There's no place for the parents to park.

So oftentimes, you'll see the roadway Williams will be impacted because they can't park to go pick up their children. They have to stay actually on the roadway itself. So a lot of compound issues in that area, sir.

Great. Those are all my questions. I have some thoughts that I'll save for later on. Thanks thanks guys for showing up. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. Any I'll be happy to stay up here to address

Yeah. There's probably just a couple more clarifying questions. I'm obsessed with parking. I have been for nine years. Okay. So this is this is my my time. Would like to start with, George, if you could bring back or Vera, bring back the slide that has all of the recommendations on there and some of the issues. It's an accountability thing. I still have sorry. When he brings that up, I want to ask a question.

From my standpoint, it's really I love studies. I love data, everything else. This is for my own edification and hopefully the community's. We seem to have confusion around accountability, at least from where I sit. We've been talking about parties. So enforcement. Enforcement is not happening because

So there's multiple issues we're dealing with internally. The way our PD is constructed now, we have part time parking control officers. These are young younger members of our workforce that are interested in getting to law enforcement. They're and I'll speak frankly here. They're paid less than they would get paid at In N Out.

They work very odd hours because of the time in which the parking enforcement is necessary. These aren't popular times to work. So we have trouble staffing those positions, although we do still have them. Another thing, ma'am, that's impacting our enforcement is just California law. In the past, prior to 2023, there was a case in San Francisco, often referred to as the scoff law, that enabled us to tow vehicles after multiple violations, unpaid parking tickets.

That's no longer an option now. We're currently working with the city attorney's office to figure out ways on how we can navigate that through search warrants and things of that nature. But I'm finding in my experience that even though we are doing enforcement, issuing citations, there's no they could just continue to stack up. So they'd rather have that parking and not pay the $40.50 dollars parking citation and reserve that spot for themselves or their families. So the enforcement efforts aren't necessarily making the impact. The risk versus reward is not imbalance.

Does that California law also prevent like the long term vehicles just sitting on the street for weeks? Now those that is something that can be initiated, or is that say more about that a little bit.

I'll I'll allow my partner to speak up here. Yeah.

Go ahead, John. Hi. Sergeant John Hedges. I'm, supervisor of the traffic unit. So that's the seventy two hour abatement law. That's still in effect. We're still enforcing that. We have the option to either issue a, municipal citation on those vehicles parked over seventy two hours, or we have the option of towing their vehicle. Typically, we, issue a citation at first, and if it becomes one of those vehicles that just continuously is parked in the same location, we'll tow it.

K. Alright. Good to know. Thank you very much.

Absolutely, ma'am.

It just I'll save my thoughts. Configuration changes of parking. And I don't know if that was part of of this discussion as well. Like, I don't know a lot about it, but, like, the the way you come in and, you know, is it a parallel parking job? Do you pull in? Was all of that, explored as part of this? And I'm sorry if I missed it.

We didn't take a particularly deep dive into assessing, you know, the how to change, like, street circulation or how to create, like, angled parking, things of that nature. That that wasn't within the scope of this particular effort.

Yeah. It just seems if we're gonna recommend exploration, I'm just saying that would be a great thing to explore because there's there's some efficiencies that could probably assist the fact that we just have more cars than we have spaces. So, also, in terms of, the parking lots, I know people expressed interest in shared parking. I've I am this is something that I focus on here too. You can do it in Old Town. Got these big empty lots. You got areas that are not being utilized. Who would be accountable or responsible for negotiating those? Is that something that the city can initiate? Is it something how how does that work?

At the end of the day, it would essentially be a private agreement between, the apartment communities and commercial lot owners. What we're recommending as part of, this package would be for the city to clarify the the the municipal code pathways that allow that, exchange to happen, but, but but that's the extent of, what staff is proposing today.

Okay. So I just is we're gonna pass this on to city council. I'm just curious if they can come along with some verbiage, but that's the and, Alexa, I don't know if you have something to say on that, but I know there's some liability issues. I know that there's but from my standpoint, it seems like if you're an apartment building owner and you're renting a two bedroom apartment to people with six cars, there's some accountability there. And I don't know if that is, anywhere in this discussion or if the history of, you know, parking studies, if that's been looked at before that you can go back to the, landowner? I

think the simple answer to your question is no. That wasn't looked at. In in terms of, you know, rent renting, you know, to a family that has six cars or something like that, I mean, there there are state laws that kind of declare what overcrowding is. But it's two people per bedroom plus one. So there's actually it can be very legal to have five cars for a two bedroom unit.

It's really just the standard under which these units were built at the time that they were built. It creates the situation that we're experiencing right now or that this community is experiencing right now. But there's really no what's the word I want? There's no really rectifying that at this point in terms of the number of cars per unit.

Sure. Our current permit parking program does have a four permit maximum per household. So but but that's with if they were participating in the program.

Yeah. And I get it. Like, this is just this is this is a nightmare for so many people. You imagine having to walk thirty minutes or actually, you know, having to put resources on enforcement. Okay. I will save my comments for for after when we bring it back to the commission. I'll first ask if we if it is there anything else before?

One more question. Sure. So in in your opinion, with these recommendations of removing inoperable, oversized, and adding permit, do you think that would meaningfully get it below the 85%?

I think the maybe the other way that I'll answer the question is I think we know that there's no silver bullet that, at the end of the day, it's a supply versus demand situation. And really, the things that would need to be done to meaningfully change the circumstances out there are very long term things, to both of your points earlier, encouraging ways to get around other than a car, things that are more suited for general plan kind of conversations to change travel patterns and behaviors. So really, at the end of the day, something something of that level is is what would be needed to to really meaningfully change things. But in the near term and midterm, there are things that we could be doing to button up our existing processes and and allocate our our resources a little bit better. Fair.

And that's what we're here with today.

Thank you.

Alright. If there's nothing else, I'm gonna ask if there are any public comments. Vera? Share. There is one from John Gray. Go ahead, John.

Yeah. Specifying some of the stuff in the report on the app based communication, what that was is currently in the Tustin app. There's only an option for abandoned vehicles. And so the recommendation that I was giving during the meeting was to add a category that goes to either the traffic unit or parking enforcement. I think some of the frustration in some of these zones is that some there's some cars that are more intrusive than others.

And so the ability to report that gives the data dataset that traffic or parking enforcement can can do. Because right now, I know on our street, there's currently a permit parking zone, but they know and this is leaning into the second point. They know that the parking enforcement doesn't show up till five, you know, 04:30 to to six. So the second the second point with the enforcement is actually being able to utilize it because if you have a four hour permit program and you're only enforcing at the last hour and a half, many people are purposely parking in these zones knowing that if they leave by four, they're not gonna receive a ticket at all. So those are the the two big recommendations is that we have the LPRs, but they're not being utilized.

If I were to call the norm the basically, if I need to get these enforced, I need to supposedly call at 01:30 in the morning. I can't just, you know, call at 10:10PM, which is also why a lot of people in that meeting are saying that the hours should be earlier than than 2AM because most people are not gonna wake up at two in the morning to call a persistent person that doesn't care. Thank you.

Anyway, that was an interesting, comment. Yes. Yes.

Put on. Light. I just like to note that, our LPRs are now working on the two vehicles, which were noted in the report that they weren't. So we've got those back up and running, and they're they're working properly, and they're helping us out with our enforcement. Thank you.

One last clarifying question. What does this, enforcement vendor situation look like? Like, there's third parties out there that that will do twenty four seven enforcement, and we just pay them? Yes. And, and there really is no, because, obviously, you have to pay for this. So so it looks like we have a lot of outstanding tickets. Does that go back to the state law? Like, if somebody doesn't pay their parking tickets, like, I can't get my registration.

Correct. Yeah. So what's happening with the with the change of law like the captain mentioned is folks aren't getting their cars towed immediately for the scofflaw violation for being a violation of five or more citations. However, when they go to pay the registration, they have to pay for those tickets just like toll road violations, same with parking citations. And then what happens is their vehicles become unregistered or not registered.

Mhmm.

And once it hits six months, then we can tow their car for being expired over six months. It So just kinda trickles. It's kicking the the can down the road, but eventually, we end up getting the cars for being expired over six months, and that's still legal for us to tow them.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Mind if I ask a question?

Go for it.

So there was mention about the new daylighting law. How available are those parking spots currently? Like, are people park I think it's 20 feet from the curb? Correct.

Yeah. It's 20 feet on the approach for an intersection. We're not doing a lot of daylight enforcement. We're letting the cars park because we recognize we have a parking issue unless somebody calls and complains or, for example, it's blocking the ramp, the ped ramp for people to to get out and cross the street, then we'll go out and do enforcement. But we're not actively enforcing that very much.

And from what I understand, it's illegal to park there whether the curb is painted red or not. Right?

Correct.

Pretty crazy. Did Tustin paint the curbs? Okay.

Interesting. If we did, sir, if we did start some of that enforcement, it would compound the problems we have down there already. Yeah.

So

we're kinda taking it as a like the public member said, you know, when they call, we'll address it, but we're not arbitrarily going out and doing it causing further strain in the community. Gotcha.

Plus if we went out and painted, it'd be a lot of work for engineering and it'd cost a lot of money and maintenance and everything just to keep that red curve looking good.

Fair enough. Thank you, guys.

Any additional questions or Questions. Can move on if there's no more no one else. Bureau? Chair, there are none. Thank you. I wanna bring it back, just for any final comments before we receive and file.

Through the chair. Yeah. I would, I know this is a receive and file item, but I would just tell staff and and city leadership, city council, city planning commission included to tread carefully here. Look. My this is especially West Of The 55 and South Of The 5 is a very not understood part of Tustin, I myself included.

Probably drive it maybe maybe once a year, I'm probably overstating it that that. As a resident of Columbus Square, I I see a problem here. That that I'll admit that comes from my bias. And any parking program that we would implement that city run is frankly a regressive tax, especially in this part of the of the the community. You know, it's it's concerning to hear, and I I'm sure there's workarounds on it, but increasing incremental increasing amounts for additional cars per house and for permits from, you know, 50 25, 50, 75, that becomes a lot of money.

And ironically, you know, typically what happens is that the more cars in a household, the lower income those those individuals are in those households. So, as someone who who doesn't like parking on the streets or excessive parking has has concerns about this, I think there's some significant economic concerns for those residents in the in this part of the community. And are are we also in search of a solution? Is this a solution in search of a problem? You know, nobody else there's we had one public comment today.

So I I'm not sure there's a problem here. I think it's just a function of, this current situation is just a function of of this area. It's unfortunate that it's underparked, but it happens to be a form of market rate affordable housing for a lot of members of our community. And, you know, mind, in the money is better spent in beautification. I know we did a park at Heidemann Elementary School recently, which is great.

I would, you know, instead of these nice alternative modes of methods of transportation, I think just lipstick on a pig. I think beautification would be better here. So those are just my comments and thoughts. I did have some concerns about the study as well, though. The study seemed to have taken a long time, but I think there should be a survey. If this was to go forward more seriously, which I hope it's limited just to communication and more outreach and not, a serious look at at the parking program, that there be an actual count of, on street parking stalls. It's a relatively small area. It can't be that bad. But those are my my my thoughts that I hope are communicated.

I think just in in in to some degree echoing that where we wanna avoid a tax especially on a a neighborhood that's a little lower income, whether the tax is through permits or affordability, I something I I mildly disagree on. I appreciate the city being proactive and trying to raise quality of life for all residents. I do understand that market rate housing that, you know, comes with some inconveniences but I think if there's anything that we can do to improve the quality of life for those folks, I appreciate the city seeing what can be done short term, long term, in between to try to do that.

I agree. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, having lived in an area that had a parking issue, I knew that I would drive with my skateboard in the car because I was gonna park far away, and then I was gonna skateboard in. In that process, I'm sure there are people that are parking far away, walking. Maybe they're skateboarding. I don't know what the cool thing is nowadays.

But I would wanna make sure that those methods of transportation from your parking spot to your house are safe. So that's where I wanna double down on our mobility infrastructure, you know, not just especially increasing visibility on lighting. And, you know, even if we were to add a little bit of a bike lane, not just the Sharrows, because I know it's dark, and there's gonna be a lot of people moving around at nighttime. So that's my emphasis is giving these people a place a safe place to park and walk because I don't think we're gonna be able to add the street. I mean, I know we can't add street to add parking, so I think we need to make it a safer, more pleasant spot for people to walk and move from their parking spots to their places of residence.

So that's it for my thoughts.

Thank you, commissioner Douthat. So I'm just gonna echo, I think, what most of us are thinking. I don't think enforcement is the solution, and it's not the issue. It's the issue is that people probably work far away and need to drive their car. I did get a call from my son at 02:00 in the morning, and he could not find parking. And we just decided he was gonna eat the $48 ticket. Right? It's like he you know, he this is and this is times 30,000. Right? So I think what this study the exploration in the study and George, it's an excellent presentation.

It's a lot to digest is the solutions, right? Like, I this is a way to figure this out. And I don't you know, I was going to say at first when I was reading this, it's like, need to get old people volunteering in there, get my husband out of the house, you know, and off the golf course and implementing these tickets. But that's not necessarily the solution. But I do think configuration and maybe I don't know if we have community advocacy that can go to those communities and say, hey, let's go talk to the owner of this mini market that has 25 spots open from 11PM to 7AM.

I don't know. And I we've about this for years. I don't know what that looks like or if it can be or if this is something that can be an issue. Like, that's a great use of funding is maybe getting behind something like that that is solutions oriented. I just think in today's, like, uncertainty, economic times, and how expensive it is to live in Orange County so people can get home safely, That that really would be a nice, bow to put on this, exploration study, at least from my perspective.

But those are my comments. Anyone else? Alright. We're gonna receive and file. Okay.

Right. Next is the economic study of key industrial areas. This is the recommendation that the Planning Commission will receive and file this report, and we are going to have a staff presentation starting with director Alexa, Smittle. And would you like to start with that?

I will. Thank you very much, chair.

Yep.

This evening, I'll be introducing Thomas Gonzales from EPS shortly. He's with, an economic consulting firm that we brought on to take a look at our industrial areas. There are a few reasons we're engaged in this conversation tonight and this research. And one of those is that we have all been watching areas transition from industrial to other uses, most notably housing lately. That's been happening immediately across our borders in Santa Ana and in Irvine. This is population increase. This is state legislation. It's for all of these reasons. So in Tustin, staff has received questions from developers and from property owners whether or not Tustin is considering a transition of uses in our industrial areas. And we've even had one preliminary application filed with us.

So as the commission knows, our general plan is old. We are looking at launching a comprehensive update next year. So we have all of these reasons that it kind of made sense to say, hey, what is happening with our industrial areas? And let's get a little bit of conversation started on that. Let's get some data around that. So Mr. Gonzalez will be presenting a lot of information tonight. Most of it is quantitative. But you will also have some qualitative components because there's more than numbers that makes up what is a good land use. A city is fabric of different uses.

We need our Costcos to go buy food and feed our families, and it provides sales tax that allows us to go build a park. And we also need the park to go run and play. So an industrial is a component of that. It is a component of a broader city. So we're really focused. And all the data tonight is about industrial and what's happening around us. But I really encourage you to sort of think of it as a piece of the bigger puzzle that makes up all of Tustin and what that looks like in the future. So you will be hearing all of this fresh, I know. We do very much want your participation. So Thomas is going to be taking pauses as we go through these different sections to get your feedback, to get your thoughts.

This is it's a big conversation, but tonight is not the only part of the conversation. We are building up towards what does the future look like, and we always want to be talking about that. No decision is being asked of you. This is a receive and file item, as the chair mentioned, But we really do encourage you to bring us your thoughts so as we go back and continue to study and continue to think we can flesh those out further. So with that, Thomas?

Thank you, Alexa. Good evening, commissioners, staff. Thomas Gonzales, vice president with economic and planning systems. Good to be be back in Tustin. We worked on the downtown and Red Hill specific plan updates a couple years ago. So I was excited to provide more analysis for you all. And I'm here with my colleague Andrew Williams, who who helped put together a lot of this information. And as Alexis said, there's a lot in here. I'll try not to overwhelm you too much. If you have questions, I'm going to pause between sections and there will be some time at the end for discussion.

So as mentioned, there's been some interest in non industrial uses in the industrial city's industrial zones. And with this study, we wanted to, one, evaluate and characterize the value of the existing industrial uses and properties. And we also then wanted to assess various redevelopment opportunities, including some of those non industrial uses and their potential impact on the city. I've listed some of the key study elements here on the right. We're gonna kinda go through the sections, and as I mentioned, we'll we'll pause between them.

But background and context, employment picture, the real estate market picture, looking at some case studies of residential conversion, revenue, and the impacts, including fiscal impacts. We've we've reached out to stakeholders and looked at some of the residential services near these areas, so I'm excited to walk through it with you. Quick background briefing. Just there's a lot of data in here. If you know, pulled it from a lot of different sources, CoStar is real estate data, JobsEQ is employment data as is OnTheMap.

That's the longitudinal and Longitudinal Employment Household Dynamic Survey. Some other other as as we business analysts online, Citi provided us with some place or AI data, lots of staff input, of course. And I'll I'll be kinda talking about this as we go through. We also spoke with several experts, including commissioner Higuchi plans. Some broker, Michael Hartle, who who works at Colliers, one of the partners at Dermody, which is an owner developer of those big two warehouses you see on 55, Kevin Moshe Yeti at Epic, which is currently redeveloping their property on Red Hill.

And then Marika Pointer at the city of Irvine gave us some good context on how their city is proceeding with this type of with with their industrial zones and and residential development going on there. So background and context. I just wanna introduce the zones. So these are the two areas of the city of Tustin that we studied. We've broken into a west zone there along 55 between 55 and Red Hill on the West Side of Tustin Legacy.

And then the other zone is on the East along the Irvine City border and South of the 5 also bordering Tustin Legacy, including the Metrolink station there that we've highlighted for context. We've included some aerials to give you guys a little historical perspective. Back in 1938 this was all farmland, like most of the city in fact. In 1960 you can see the air station came in there, the runways being shaped out, still farmland in our zones. By 1970 it looks like there's a little bit of construction starting but not much.

Most the bulk of the present development occurred between 1970 and 1980, so most of the properties there are about 50 years old. And you can see there by 1980 also a lot of the other development in Tustin was starting to fill in. Irvine as well. I think I five was starting there in 1960, you can see it. And by 1990, you see most of the current development pattern of the area.

The marketplace is there. Most of the the parcels have filled in, and here's present day with development now finally occurring in the Tustin Legacy Area as well. And some of the final little corners there, I think along 55 in particular, you're probably familiar with some of the more recent development there on the West Zone along 55 that's been filling in. So now you guys are kind of familiarized, situated with the areas we're looking at. I want to talk about employment trends and kind of compare the study zones to the city overall, talk about jobs, industries.

So there's a lot of information, I'm gonna try to highlight the key points. This is just a citywide look and that kind of illustrates that Tustin has a diverse economy with strong growth. We've we're breaking down most of our jobs data into industries. I've got retail and hot these these are sort of standard categorizations used nationwide called NICS codes, or they NICS classifications. It's got retail and hospitality, administrative and support, etcetera, professional scientific and technical services, health care and social assistance, construction, manufacturing, and public administrationeducational services, and then all other industries.

You can see that we've got 2013 and 2023. 2023 is the most recent data we're using because that's the most recent year that that on the map longitudinal employment housing dynamics survey was is was completed, and that we that data is really helpful. It's from the US Census Bureau because it we can look at smaller geographies like these study areas, so that's why 2023 is the most recent year we're looking at. And then you can see where the concentrations are in Tustin. Actually, a lot in retail and hospitality, administrative and support, and then other industries, which is sort of catch all.

But a lot of growth, 44% growth in the last ten years. And different industries have different average wages associated with them, and we'll talk about that as we go through. We've listed here the top employers in each of the zones. We've got some pretty large employers. Schools First, you're all familiar with.

They have a big campus in the West Zone, and so that's the top business there. We've also got PacBell. We've got Tricon, which is a real estate firm, a wholesale trade finance insurance group. And then in the East Zone, we've got some manufacturing, again, retail trade, some professional scientific and technical services firms, Rivian and Zymo, and then some some other smaller firms. There's some firms that focus on kind of employment services for hospitals, janitorial employment services, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

You might have seen their campus over in the East Zone. And then we can also so that's looking at it from the employment perspective. We can also look at it from the gross receipts perspective, which is just kind of how much business they're doing, and the the picture's a little different. We see wholesale trade the wholesale trade companies are kind of dominating the picture here. They might not have a lot of employees, but they're selling a lot of goods. Micro Center, you might be familiar with. It's a retailer in the in the West Zone. They do a good amount of business, and there's some construction. Again, manufacturing is on here. So this gives us a picture.

There's there's quite a bit of activity going on in the areas and pretty diverse types of companies. Also wanna highlight that when we look at the top 10 employers in the city, it's sort of another way of looking at employment. Five of the 10 are in the study area, PACBELL AT and T, Schools First, Rivian, New American Funding, and Avid Biosciences. These are the ones listed in the city's annual report. And none of these five were listed ten year ten years ago.

So these are all, like, new companies that are have either grown or moved into the area. So there's quite a bit of dynamism going on in this area. And if we narrow in on the growth in jobs in the last in that ten year period, 2013 to 2023, about two thirds of it is actually in the study area. So even though you look down at the bottom row, the 45%, that's the number of jobs in the study area relative to the city overall. So they're actually but they're accounting for 66% of the growth.

So they're kind of swinging an out they're providing an outsized portion of growth and employment in the city. So 10,000 jobs in the last ten years versus 15,000 citywide, or out of the 15,000 citywide. And if we look at the study area and divide it up into the two zones, a bit more of that job growth is actually in the West Zone. So 65% of study area job growth was in the West Zone. It's actually falling largely in the category of administrative and support services, but also some manufacturing growth.

In the East Zone, construction construction jobs or construction industry jobs, and professional scientific and technical services are the big growers. And, yeah, this is a visual visualization of that. So these are those industries, and then we've just kind of showing you the relative number of jobs between the two zones. Again, administrative and support is a big one, especially in the West Zone. Information is largely job type jobs are largely in the West Zone.

Construction more in the East Zone. And then you've got kinda some some that are split where, like, manufacturing, wholesale trade, finance, and insurance. There's some health care. And then at the bottom there, I've listed the percentage that each of these make up of the city total. So 72% of administrative jobs are in the study area.

More than 80% of manufacturing construction, wholesale trade, information jobs are in the study area. A smaller percentage of health care and social assistance, educational services, other industries, those tend to be outside the study area. And then bringing back that wage piece, looking at when when you look at the average job average wage per industry, the jobs in the study area tend to be in those ones that have higher wages. So the weighted average wage, how much we think the employees in this area are making, is actually higher than the city average, especially in the East Zone. That concentration is in slightly higher paying industries.

A lot of jobs information. I'll pause for a second. So don't have any questions about the jobs employment information before I move on to real estate market.

Quick question. Just confirming those industry categories are of the company, not of the type of job, right?

It's a good question. In most cases, it's tied more to the building. So one company can have different employees in different industries, but usually it's categorized or like the way by building. So you might actually have one company with some employees in one industry and some employees in another industry, especially if they have multiple buildings in the same city. Okay.

But yes, aren't perfect. Employment number employment numbers are hard to verify, and sometimes you have HR offices in one city that over that count employees who are actually in another city on their forms when they fill them out. So it's not a perfect science, but it gives us a good indication of trends. It gives us a good information of order of magnitude and kind of relativity within you know, that relative share within the city.

Thank you.

Real quick. Was the admin support and supporting services of waste management or and waste management?

It so most of the jobs are administrative and support. Waste management and remediation are grouped in with that same category, and it makes the title kind of long and cumbersome. But they are that's a combination of separate groups. And if you dive down deeper, most of the jobs in Tustin in that category are within administrative and support and not within waste management. There are some, but just That's yeah. Just the that's like the full name of the industry, but it's a little bit confusing.

Fair enough. That's why

we shortened it here. Alright. So turning our attention to the real estate side of things. We define the trade area with some input from the broker that we spoke with. Folks tend to view the Orange County Airport or Central Orange County area as including the Irvine And Business Complex and much of Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, and Tustin, as well as all the way out to the Spectrum side of Irvine.

I think that's sort of we heard that sometimes that's included, sometimes it's not. That's a little bit of, I would say, newer development compared with the other areas within the trade area. But by and large, this is a geography that represents kind of the most relevant competitive supply. So where tenants might be compare like, looking for spaces, they probably look you know, looking within this this area. Or if a developer owner is looking to buy or develop something, this this is a a good, estimate of where they might be looking and comparing Tustin against.

And we've got some color coding here and and bubbles just to kinda show you where specifically the industrial and flex building stock is. Flex is category that is very similar to industrial but tends to have more office space, so it allows for more variety of users. But you can sort of consider industrial and flex to be very related and similar. So what we see is looking at the stock of industrial space in this area, there's actually not a ton of growth recently. If we look down at the bottom at the bar chart, there's a more development before 2009.

It slowed significantly. There is still development activity. But if you look up at the inventory square footage from 2016 to 2026, you see it hasn't really changed. So what new development there is is generally being offset by demolitions and conversions to other uses. So it's kind of steady state, but rents have continued to increase. Vacancy has also increased. And the main drivers of that from the conversations that we had are, one, rising interest rates. There was a major labor negotiations issue going on that was affecting industrial users in the area. Obviously, the tariff related uncertainty. And then there's quite a bit of competitive supply pressure from the broader region.

If you look at the inventory for the Inland Empire, it's like off the charts. Like that in the same period that we saw no change here, there's like a tripling of the inventory out there. So that's a sort of larger factor affecting the area. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. But you can see on the graph here the dark blue line is the trade area.

And then we've got the other colors just to show the more volatile specific vacancy of the study area. And these are small enough areas where you can see the impacts of individual buildings. So the Myford Road facility where Rivian is now, when that was built before it was marked as leased, you can see that increased vacancy there in the East zone. And then in the West zone, those two new buildings that still haven't leased or part of what's driving up vacancy in that area. Oops.

And then if we look at rents, so that increase in vacancy has also led to a slight drop recently in rents, even though as I mentioned, it's generally been steadily rising in recent years, but the rents have fallen off a little bit in the last couple of years. And we see just generally those the study areas are more or less tracking the trade area, just with a little bit more fluctuations since they're more impacted by individual buildings. And then we put together some maps to kind of visualize this for the study areas. So this is the West zone. There's 5th 5 is running there on the left hand side and Tustin Legacy is on the right.

And we color coded the different types of buildings. So there's not just flex and industrial. There's also office buildings or buildings that are categorized as office. Again, sometimes the line between office flex and industrial is not always cut and dry, but they are all classified to some degree. And so we've got those color coded, also some retail, the hotel hospitality, and some specialty specialties mostly, in this case, self storage.

And then on the right hand, we've highlighted a couple places where new development has occurred or renovations have occurred just to show you where investment is happening. So you can see the new hotels, the new Schools First facilities, those new industrial facilities, and then some other renovations that have gone on. And then we we did the same for the East Zone here. So again, you can see mostly industrial and flex properties, some concentration of office as well, and retail down in the Jamboree area across the Metrolink area. You might know that area.

There's a lot of sort of more customer facing retail, especially in veterinary services down there. And still some renovations and new construction going on there as well. And if we just kinda look at the city zones relative to the city, the the combination of industrial and flex, it's basically a 100 of the city's stock. So there's the there's a building or two outside of these study zones. But when it comes to industrial and flex, it's in that top row, that 100% shows it's a 100% of the city's land use of that type. And it's about 8% of the trade area. So it's a modest but meaningful share of of that that larger geography, And it's pretty much all of Tustin's industrial stock.

Can you explain that again, the percentage of trade? Like, can you define the percentage of trade area?

Yeah. So if we go back to this map here, these are all the properties in the trade area that are industrial or flex. And you can see if you kind of look closely, you'll see there's a concentration in intestines. So the ones in intestine make up 8% of this larger map. And if you look, you can basically see the outlines of our study area, their intestine, because 100% of the purple dots in intestine are in our study areas.

Can you also define flex for me?

Yeah. So it's basically it's still like you know, you might have a warehouse, but there's like a a an area of it that's designated as office. So different types of companies there. It tends to be more desirable for, like, R and D or manufacturing. I mean, there's really a broad range of companies that operate in these spaces, but that's the basic definition is that there's a higher percentage.

For office, there's often sometimes like fewer loading docks because it might be less it's it's more about they're they're not necessarily doing like distribution and stuff. It's more about maybe manufacturing or storing things inside. But, yeah. And then the sort of detail on the maps we showed you all the activity in the it's a little bit more development activity in the West Zone with those two new industrial buildings I mentioned built by Dermody, the bank and the hotels going up in recent years. On the right hand, you see there only a couple buildings built new since 2001.

And that's and one of yeah. One of those is the Rivian the facility that Rivian now owns. And then if we go to renovations, it's a little bit flipped. So more a little more renovation activity on the right hand. The years there, you see two like, 2024, 2023, 2020, a mixture of office and flex buildings getting renovated. And in the West Zone, not quite as much renovation activity. Get back to, like, 1996 pretty quick there. But but generally, activity in both areas as far as development and renovation. And this is sort of some context. So those and we've highlighted those new developments in Tustin.

And then you can see where else new development is happening, both in industrial flex as well as in office and retail in the area. So there's still new industrial and flex development going on in Santa Ana, in the Irvine Business Complex, and these other areas nearby. More office over Spectrum area, a little bit less new industrial, but also the industrial flex properties over there are newer. So it kinda makes sense that maybe there's less, but but a lot of office development over there. And I wanna share some perspectives again from the conversations we had.

We we what we heard is that from the tenant perspective, so folks looking to rent space for their business, many are targeting this market because they are they depend a lot on employees. They may have higher employee counts, and so they are looking to be in close proximity to educated, qualified employees. That's sort of the profile of tenants that want to locate in this market. They they like it because Tustin and these areas are have proximity to many amenities and major transport corridors, so that's attractive for their employees. They may have higher parking needs because of those higher employee counts.

And what we're seeing is the the pure warehouse distribution users. So your big I mean, for the most part, your big warehouses, they're relocating to the Inland Empire because there's a lot more supply. It's newer. It's cheaper. And so we're seeing less of that and more of these smaller mid sized boutique manufacturing, R and D, office sort of industrials.

These businesses are kind of in between but have want to be near high quality employees. And also a few heavy industrial users, those tend to concentrate more in the northern part of the county where there's older industrial zones in Anaheim and Fullerton. On the owner side, so those who are developing or investing in industrial properties, we heard that generally Orange County and much of LA County are considered supply constrained because there's limited areas zoned for industrial. And there they see a lot of continued interest for these types of uses, especially from advanced manufacturing and then retailers that need warehousing. So not necessarily an Amazon warehouse, but the the, you know, storage facility for some retailer that's maybe online or in person and needs extra space.

And that and they see they see interest in the market despite some of that, those recent disruptions that I mentioned having lead to increased vacancy. Overall, there's low turnover of industrial properties. Most are owned by institutional long term owners. We did hear that there's some concern about potential limitations or conflicts from locating new residential uses near industrial. We're curious about that.

We asked about it. And there was an from those we spoke with an awareness of the demand for housing that's but we also heard that right at this moment, there's some concern that there's an oversupply. Actually, there's quite a few buildings opening up. And so I think sounds like folks are cautious about maybe starting new residential projects right now until some of that supply is taken up by the market. But there is this I think this graphic does a good job of showing you that demand for multifamily.

There's and and also that that supply. So these are new projects in the last few years in residential. It's the map you saw before, but I've added residential multifamily in yellow. So you can see quite a bit of that a lot. And and we've highlighted here two areas, one in the Irvine Business Complex and then a little corner of Santa Ana that we selected as case studies that I'm going to talk about in a moment. There's been quite a bit of multifamily development in those areas. And you also have a chance to ask questions before I dive into that. So that was sort of the real estate market development market portion.

You're good to go.

Cool. I see the row. I'm excited.

The row. Yeah. Well, I'm sure you all are aware. There's there's there's a bit of activity in this, you know, and and some areas that are or were industrial that have seen residential development. And so we wanted to look particularly at the Irvine Business Complex and that port part of Santa Ana.

They're very similar in character, built around the same time. And we wanted to understand what how that's going for them, why that's happening, and, you know, how much housing is being built. If we start with IBC, Irvine Business Complex, that real residential development there actually started back in the eighties. So it was but it was mostly kind of one off zone zoning amendments, general plan amendments. It accelerated in the February, twenty tens, twenty twenties in particular.

There's been about 17,000 units built within that area. Most are rental, but 22% are for sale condo or townhome units. You can see they're kind of concentrated in certain areas. We heard that the area directly under the flight path there in the western part is a little bit more preserved for industrial. The Canco is very tall because of the flight path, which is actually the original reason for the Eastern Study area in Tustin.

It was under the Marine Corps or the flight path. It's actually part of the reason it wasn't residential. And then the Santa Ana, this one has just over 2,000 units, but they're all recently built just in the last few years there on Red Hill. I think it's important to keep in mind as we are looking at this and thinking about, you know, what that means for those cities and why they're, you know, allowing this to happen, I think the contexts are important to consider, the economic context. They both of these cities are larger, and they have more diverse concentrations of industrial land and employment.

Just to put that into a few numbers, so Tustin has just under 8,000,000 square feet of industrial influx. Irvine has nearly 40,000,000, and Santa Ana has 36,000,000. So quite a bit more. And on the employment side, they also both have much larger employment numbers, 51,000 employees in Tustin versus nearly 300,000 in Irvine and about 150,000 in Santa Ana. So think when we especially when we spoke with the planner in Irvine, I think they viewed it little bit differently.

They're not necessarily turning over all of their industrial areas, but they have identified certain areas where they are allowing residential development to happen. I think if you look at Santa Ana, it's similar that there are specific areas that have been designated as mixed use zones. And so what we generally took away from looking at these case studies is that this development in both cases is fairly aligned with citywide planning efforts. In Irvine, that's been going on for longer. So they had a vision plan in 2010 that set a cap of 15,000 units.

And now with their 2024 general plan update, they have allowed they're allowing another 15,000 units. So they are continuing this process of developing into, like, a mixed use zone. And in Santa Ana, it's more recent, and it it lines with their 2022 general plan update where they designated certain industrial commercial areas as mixed use zones. And I mentioned that for both of them these areas are smaller share of citywide industrial land and employment, so I think that's important context. And in Irvine I also wanted to note that their plans have really recognized that transitioning to a mixed use development area does require a lot of design standard changes, major infrastructure investment.

They have impact fees that they've put in place and a lot of pedestrian and bike infrastructure in particular that they're targeting. I think if you look think about the streets in an industrial area, they look a bit different than the streets in residential areas in many cases. And then all cities right now are thinking about their arena targets, and it would be hard to say that that's not a factor in both cities' considerations. And I think both of these areas have sites that are designated for housing in their housing elements and in their housing goals. Really interesting case study, though, that came up about the challenges of balancing industrial and residential uses.

In Irvine, you might have heard about this project last year. There was a proposal for 541,000 square feet of warehouse distribution on Von Carmen behind the Walmart. The there was quite a bit of opposition, and one of the arguments was that it's very you know, that's not an appropriate use near all these residents. There's residential across the street now. And the city ultimately pushed quite hard for the developer to essentially submit a new application for housing, and they promised to expedite it.

And they said if if if that doesn't work out, we'll buy the land from you because they were that committed to it not becoming warehouse and distribution, which is interesting. And it it just highlights the fact that it is difficult for housing and industrial uses to cohabitate across the street. And once you introduce residential uses, you may be there is some impact and potential limits that you're placing on the ability to continue or expand the operations of industrial uses. I thought that was really telling and interesting. Questions about the case studies?

All right. We're going to talk about revenue because land use and development activity is really important for the city's finances. Wanted to make sure that we took a look at that and tried and want to characterize for you guys what that looks like. So from a property tax basis, these areas are only 8% of city land, but they provide about 13 over 13% of the city's property tax revenue. A little bit more in the East Zone, they're on the Irvine border.

And if we look at sales tax, it's also around the same amount, 13.5%, which is interesting because they're not retail areas, but there is still a lot of business going on in there and some of that is retail. A little bit more in the West Zone in this case. And, yeah, significant portion of city revenue. And we were we were able to actually look at fortunately, we were able to get sales tax data from the city so we could break that out for the zones. And then we put together a fiscal what we call a fiscal model.

So we wanted to evaluate the overall fiscal impact of the study area. And then we're also going to talk about some of those potential redevelopment scenarios. And so we we we created we we use some assumptions for this, but we take the city budget, and we make estimates about the revenue side and about the expense side. And when we when we do that for the the existing west and east zone combined, what we see is that about 11% of total general fund revenue comes from this area. And if we limit that down to just the revenue in the general fund that we normally expect to be impacted by development, it's a little bit bigger.

It's 17%. That's because there's some revenue that's kind of not as influenced by land use patterns, or there's also quite a bit of cost recovery items and things. So again, pretty big portion of revenue there. And I'm going to walk through then the fiscal as well as other considerations around change of use. So I mentioned we built the fiscal model.

So the idea here is we look at new development, new service population, the people living and working in the new development, and related economic activity. We try to estimate how much this is going to increase the general fund revenue through property tax, sales tax, etcetera. And then also estimate how much it's going, those people living and working there is going to increase the cost of city services in terms of police, fire, infrastructure, maintenance, etcetera. So we estimate a net impact of redevelopment scenarios on the city's general fund and it varies by land use. The goal is, in this particular case, we took sort of an assumption that we have a 10 acre site.

It's a pretty big site, it's a nice round number, so it makes it easier to wrap your head around. And we created an existing condition scenario to kind of compare against. And I'll walk you through the a little bit of the math on how that came about, but it's sort of a composite of the different types of uses, so office, industrial, warehouse, etcetera. And then we wanted to compare, like, kind of a existing state versus what happens when a property redevelops into office R and D, light manufacturing, warehouse distribution, so these kind of like typical uses that we see there, but when the site gets redeveloped. And then what happens if it converts to residential.

So we looked at two options there, for sale townhomes and a higher density rental residential building. For the comparison existing condition scenario, we basically took all the properties there right now, we took all their assessed value, we took our employee estimates and like boiled it down into an average. We took out hotels, retail, undeveloped parcels, and some of the condo ized sites just because kind of a little bit more unique sites that potentially skewed the analysis. And so this represents kind of like 80 plus percent of the study area and kind of the typical existing conditions. One of the probably most influential or know, are things to consider is that you may all be familiar with Prop 13.

When you own a property for a long time, oftentimes your assessed value is not as high as it would be if you sold it or if you redeveloped it. So that is one thing that kind of influences this set of existing conditions and why you'll probably see some increase in revenue when it's redeveloped other other uses. So these are the types of uses we wanted to test. Like I said, office R and D, light manufacturing, and warehouse distribution. I think when we're looking in these study areas and in the trade area, I think warehouse distribution is probably the most common ground up development.

There's a little bit less in the other categories, especially in light manufacturing, but you do often see these as renovations. And so I think you can consider these as either new development or kind of high investment renovations. And then on the residential side would be a townhome, so kind of your 1,800 square foot three bedroom townhome or one of these multifamily rental buildings that are getting you've seen getting built in IBC and in Santa Ana, mixture of unit sizes and five to six stories. And so what do we see when we plug that into our fiscal model? The existing site on average has a positive impact for so for a 10 acre site, dollars 12,000 per year estimated contribution to the general fund after accounting for all revenue and subtracting expenses.

And so then when we go down to the industrial commercial redevelopments, those all lead to higher net contribution. The bold is sort of the net number and then the last column compares that to the 12,000. So we see those all net positive and more net positive than existing conditions. So good for the city budget when those properties turn over or get redeveloped or renovated. And then if they're converted to residential, we see mixed stories.

So with the townhomes, the foresawed townhomes, see a very an even more positive impact on the general fund. And with the multifamily rental, this reflects kind of 100% market rate multifamily apartment building. We see a slightly negative impact, so that is less than the existing conditions. I have kind of given you a visual here. I think it kind of tells the same story, but one important consideration is that multi family rental buildings, those are quite dense.

I mean you're talking about building a lot more building on a piece of property and a lot of people living there. And so that difference, that net number is a little bit is a much smaller share of kind of the revenues and expenses. And so I think this is a snap I kind of wanted to tell you that this is a snapshot in time. Assumptions around expenses, around the property value could change that pretty easily for multifamily rental because you see if you just change that by a small percentage, it's going to shift quite a bit. So I just want to caveat that finding.

It's those numbers are not you know, we don't have a crystal ball to perfectly estimate these things, but they're estimates. So snapshot based and it's based on the fiscal year 2526 adopted budget and assumptions and conditions, you know, assumptions around socioeconomic conditions. So if service levels and cost, tax rates, land use and occupancy trends, or service population trends change, market pricing, assessed values. Those things, as they change, those can all influence this a bit. And actual fiscal impacts will also be impacted by market and business cycles, changes in city cost structure, local, state, or federal policy, etcetera.

And most importantly, we went through this in a lot of detail because it's very interesting, but the fiscal side is really just one lens for evaluating land use decisions. And I think some of the other analysis we did and the case studies we shared, I think, point to a lot of other considerations. And I want to highlight some of those. So other considerations that relate to potential change of use, traffic and travel patterns, jobs housing balance, housing affordability and meeting renter needs, economic diversity and equity, community character and urban form, environmental sustainability, and land use and service adjacencies. And that one I'm going to highlight before we wrap up.

But first I'll talk briefly about just kind of policy considerations. I think it's important to note that existing city planning documents maintain commercial and industrial land use designations throughout the study area. There is some variation in what exactly is permitted based on the specific plan for each of the sub areas, but generally the zoning does not permit residential development. And there is some recent state level legislative changes, specifically AB 98 and SB four fifteen that they add potentially costly design standards for logistics and warehouse developments that are located near residences as well as near schools, public parks, day cares, etcetera. So to the extent that there is new construction or major expansions, the more closer proximity to residential, there's a potential that some of those laws could kick in and make it difficult, more expensive for those businesses to invest because they can't put their loading docks on this side of the building.

They have to move them or they have to have a buffer. There's a lot of this is new laws because of the I mentioned the Inland Empire and how much how much growth is happening out there. That some that hasn't all been designed really well. And so there's been some state level changes around this. But it complicates things a little bit when you're trying to mix residential and industrial.

And so services. We wanted to just kind of give you a snapshot of some important places that people moving into homes might be trying to get to and from. So we've put community facilities like schools, childcare, libraries, parks on here. And there actually are some small school operations in the study areas. And there's been some applications and interest for operating schools in some of these facilities.

But for the most part, all the Tustin public schools are located outside the study areas. There are some parks nearby. Obviously, in the Tustin legacy area, there's quite a few new parks. But not a lot of childcare or libraries in close proximity. And then retail is also an important factor.

This was something we heard in Irvine is that folks in the IBC that move there often are complaining that they're driving a long distance to the grocery store or it's a hard to find retail. So depending which study area you are, you're maybe further from grocery stores, malls, local or specialty grocery, convenience stores, pharmacies. So there is a Kaiser Permanente office in the in the East Zone and some new new retail, obviously, in the Tustin Legacy area. But wanted to, you know, include this for consideration. So to wrap up, key takeaways.

The study area, you know, we found that it makes up close to half of city jobs and accounts for well over half of the city's recent job growth, and those are concentrated in high wage industries. The industrial real estate market in the area generally continues to be dynamic and support investment and redevelopment. There's a little bit of a blip recently, but it seems like that's probably going to pass as various issues resolve. There's strong demand for residential uses, of course, and that's led to conversions of some industrial land in nearby cities, although largely based on long term planning initiatives. And our study zones produce significant revenue for the city's general fund primarily through property tax and sales tax, though some residential uses could provide more revenue.

The introduction of new residential uses in the study zones could restrict or discourage future industrial development or expansion. And the zones lack some residential serving retail and community services and likely require additional planning and infrastructure to support the mixed use district. That's sort So of That's our our take on industrial land in the city of Tustin. Happy to take any other questions you all have.

I just want to start with one question on these forecasts. When you say the dollar amount, is that over one year, over five years?

Oh, those were the fiscal? Yeah. Those were annual.

Okay. Annual figures.

So 12 yeah. I

know there's a in the election in November about senior property taxes. I always worry about that for Testin because we're all over 60 and the impact that it's going to have. The residential property taxes that will be exempted if you're over 60 after five years. That's one Not as familiar with, actually. I'm right, Michael, right? Okay. All right. So apparently, this is on the ballot in November, which is I'm excited. But, I just think that especially for a mature community like Tustin, I think it's interesting to look at. All right, I'll just turn it any other questions, comments?

There's a question on multifamily. I saw a note that your net impact to the general fund was based upon 100% of market rate development. If there was the inclusion of affordable, which most of these developments have affordable now, how does that impact the analysis?

It tends to be lead to a, like, a less lower net impact. So higher less revenue.

Less so

Same costs.

Okay. So work.

Because because the value yeah. Because the rents the rents are lower, and so the value of the building is lower, and so it pays less property tax. May have some lower sales tax, but that's, you know, not necessarily as big of an impact probably. But, yeah, the property tax tends to be a little bit lower. So the net the net number tends to be a little bit lower.

And how long have the Dermody properties been on the market?

Over a year. Think almost two years. They the the owners seemed very confident that they they would still they believe they leased. They had it would be leased. They had a very long term positive outlook on the the area. But that they yeah. They are as far as I know, they're still vacant.

Actually, I saw OC Business Journal, I think, mentioned that Andrew was leased in there today. Wow. Really? Cool.

Look at that.

There you go. He said it he's he actually said it. He said, I think we might have good news in the next few weeks or months. Or he said months or weeks. I can't remember, but that's interesting. Yeah. New jobs. They've been leasing a lot of property in the area in Santa Ana, I think. I think

the article said a 178,000 square feet in Tustin.

In those buildings?

Or

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

That's great.

Well

I mean, there there's so much information here. I think as we talk about the general plan, I'll have more more questions, but it was it was very clear. So thank you for sharing that.

Great. Yeah. Hopefully, you can this is for information. You'll have time to digest. And Lexik, of course, can

Share this with us.

Forward any questions you may have as you're taking it all in and starting to think about, yeah, general plan. Hopefully, it's useful.

Thank you. So question for staff. So we file what's the plan with I mean, what what is the intent with this? Is this to inform the general plan? Is this to

Yes. It it is to inform the general plan. It's also a a moment in time right now because we are seeing these transitioning land uses around us. And we have had applications here, so we'll be presenting this to counsel as well. So it's contextual to just sort of gauge where the market is, what kinds of things we should be considering as we look at these land uses.

And then the general plan will be, what's the status of updates?

We are hoping to launch a comprehensive update starting next calendar year, early next calendar year.

Fantastic. Any other comments or questions or digestion?

Really quick, to go back to that multifamily cost for versus revenue. So from a financial perspective, are multifamily projects not advantageous for cities?

It depends on the city, and it depends on some of the assumptions. So different cities actually, I think we have a little map here. Testing. Testing. So these areas of testing get between 10% to 12% mostly of the property tax. Some cities have more than that. Some cities have less than that. So that's one big factor that can swing what the outcome is that there's a lot of history there in terms of California property tax law. But that's a major component. And then how much do you guys spend on police and fire and other things.

Some cities have different ways of approaching those services. Some give contract cities, full service cities. And I think there's a there's almost an endless variety of how those things look and how much money per capita is spent. So I think all of those things are are major factors in what the outcome is. And then, like I said, the the property value. Right now, Southern California is kind of in a little bit of a residential real estate slump. Things are flat or slightly declining. So but if we will rewind a few years, cost of everything is lower and rents relatively are higher. The building value is higher, so that might have looked slightly different a couple of years ago.

Interesting.

That was it.

Alright. I I have comments. I don't know if we're

Yep.

Well, I'm gonna ask for public comments first before I bring it back. Chair, there are none. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Any final comments? You wanna start?

Yeah. Thanks, staff, for the for, the study. I think this was, kinda shut me up because I've always been complaining about the Pacific Center, East Pacific Plan, and all that. So it's great that we're looking at the general plan and and really taking a proactive approach to planning in these areas. So, again, I I really appreciate that. I guess my my only my comments are gonna be, you know, one of the reasons I kinda push this is Red Hill is it feels like it's it's becoming something that is good, but it's also fighting against our current zoning code and the specific plan there. You know, we've got, you know, Rye Goods. I'm just pulling it up here. That that Tricon Building is weird because it's got Rye Goods. It's got that golf club facility.

It's got that great pizza place. We we used to have Tapsbury. That that was a bummer that went down. We got a new law school there. And it's an interesting corridor because it parallels the 55.

And in spite of all the widening of the 55 we're doing, I'm pretty sure that's still going be an alternate route for everyone going to Riverside for the foreseeable future. So it's interesting that it's becoming something that it could become something more activated, especially as we build up the base. So, you know, I I I don't think it all has to go different, you know, whether it's retail, residential, or whatever, but it's it it feels like something we should be looking at as, you know, another way to show off, Tustin. And just for the record, again, I've I've mentioned this before, that Eastern industrial area near the, near the train station also just feels like a missed opportunity. I know we're building something there near there in in the near future, but, I think we're not four cities in Orange County, I I just looked it up, or, like, nine that have that has a train station.

You wouldn't even know it. I don't know that we would give up Rivian and all that stuff going on there. But it sure feels like we should be doing something different around that train station. Again, thanks so much for the studies.

No comment?

I agree. Driving up Red Hill, it's interesting because it does feel activated on the Santa Ana side. I have friends that are in some of those apartment complexes, and it's a very pleasant view from their rooftop looking down at the park. It's kind of an enjoyable residential area. And then that momentum dies as soon as you hit Tustin with I mean, we we're building out some of the industrial areas.

But, you know, standing on some of those rooftops, it is a pleasant space, and they have easy access to the parks as we're building out the base a little bit more. We're gonna be doing some great connectivity of mobility on the base or Tustin Legacy. So I do think there's a lot there will be a lot of demand on Tustin Legacy as it builds out. Does that mean that the entire area needs to be residential? I don't necessarily think so.

But at least the frontage, I think there's still an opportunity there. So incredible presentation. I mean, as a data nerd, hit the nail on the head. So I can't imagine how long it took you to put this together. I really appreciate all the hard work that you you guys have all done on this one. So thank you very much. That's it for my comments.

Great. I concur. Well done. It's a lot to process. No other comments at this point.

Just to follow-up on Tanner's comment. I did I don't wanna I made this point before, but I I do I do really appreciate the presentation and the economic data on our on our city because we we get so myopic on land use sometimes, but it's understanding the bigger picture is probably what makes better people at this dais. For example, the Tustin Auto Center, you know, we we I've it's I I think it's something we have to protect and make sure stays a huge, retail tax generating base for the city, for for its for economic health. Just remembering stuff like that is important as we as we sit at the dais, instead of just being worried about, you know, the small things, which are important, but also, hey. Let's protect some of our, our revenue generating assets or else we can end up like other cities in Orange County where we're talking about raising, taxes sales taxes.

So that's why it's a great that's why Tustin's a great place to live. We're financially stable. Thank you again.

Alright. We're gonna go ahead and receive and file this item, and, we're gonna move on to other business. Alexa?

Thank you, chair. I'd wanted to briefly share that, our economic development division was awarded, an award of merit for innovation in digital media for by the California Association of Local Economic Development. And they are going to come and speak to this commission, I think, in two meetings to give a little bit more context to what they're doing to support businesses and how they're leveraging data. So I think it should be a good presentation. I hope you enjoy it.

And then I also wanted to share a very brief update on our Parklet project, which is going along. I know we've all attempted to navigate these straits, some of us on foot to varying degrees of success. But I want to share that we are still on track to be completed in September. Our amazing public works team has had to pivot a couple of times because it is still a construction project. Sometimes materials aren't available on the schedule you want them to be available on. But everything is still moving forward with that end goal in mind. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you. All right. I'll bring it to Planning Commission comments. I'll start with you. Meg.

Just briefly, since we last convened, fortunate to attend the Easter egg hunt was really fun to watch thousands of eggs be gone in about eight seconds and also attend the legacy workshops the city put on last week. It was great to see a lot of people come out to learn about it it was very fact based, right? What's going on at the Legacy? I think that method of community outreach is great, and I really hope that the city well, I know the city will take that feedback and do a lot with it and keep people involved in the process. That's it. Alright.

Thank you.

Thank you. Quick point of pride for the historical society. One of the board of directors just finished a book on civil war veterans in the city of Tustin, and it is for sale at the historical society. He had a great speech on it on Friday. We actually had quite a collection of civil war veterans from both sides that settled in Tustin afterwards, and some were neighbors. So, yeah, it took them about five years to put it together. Really interesting history. And, yeah,

that's it. Real quick, Alexi, you are you are gonna follow-up with that earlier public comment we had at the beginning of the meeting?

Just Yes, commissioner. We will.

Okay. I yeah. I appreciate that. And I attended the workshop as well. Great. You know, frankly, I feel like I'm being listened to, so it's awesome. The the the quantitative data is was huge and, frankly, a gutsy move by staff, and I think that's what was needed, on on the hard realities of of, not the but the realities of the base. But, a lot of good stuff going on at at Tustin Legacy that I really appreciate. So thanks for for, for listening to the community on that. So much appreciated.

Alright. Great data and insights tonight. Lots of, information. I appreciate the difficulty of the, the parking situation and the study, and I do hope that we can, as a community, figure out maybe some more creative ways to address this because I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. And as somebody who lives on the other side of Testin that also has an overflow parking situation because we are adjacent to Santa Ana, I do think that those are those conversations, I will bring that up with, the mayor and city council as maybe there's some, smaller groups we can put together to think that way.

But, anyway, again, great night, great presentation. Well done, everybody. And I am going to go ahead and, adjourn tonight's meeting. And our next meeting, is scheduled for 05/12/2026. Thanks, everyone.