Hearing Will Study Next Steps in Growth of Irvine Business Complex

IRVINE —  The City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday to consider what to do with an area that some planners once saw as an “urban village” with a grand boulevard rivaling the Champs Elysee in Paris.

The urban village concept was tossed out last year when Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan was elected along with a more traditional City Council majority. But a solution for the 2,500-acre Irvine Business Complex is still needed.

Irvine slapped a building moratorium over the area in late 1989 after city officials discovered that they had approved more construction than allowed under city law. Since then, city planners and developers have been wrangling over how to allow some building to continue in the complex while preventing the area from becoming clogged with traffic when office workers leave their high-rises.

Already, planners predict that traffic in the Business Complex will worsen unless improvements are made. The complex, which stretches from John Wayne Airport to the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, is Irvine’s major job center.

City planning officials are proposing a compromise for the overdeveloped area. The plan would allow all existing structures to remain, all approved but unbuilt projects to proceed, and to permit a certain amount of building on undeveloped or sparsely developed land.

The additional development would add about 38% more building space and increase traffic by more than 70%.

Major street improvements would be required, as well as mandatory car-pooling or mass transit to prompt more workers to leave their cars at home. The city envisions about $225 million in street improvements, but officials say they do not know where they will find that money.

The urban village concept was meant to reduce traffic by adding more apartments, restaurants, shops, an elevated monorail and other amenities so that workers could live near their jobs.

During Tuesday’s 5 p.m. public hearing, the City Council will decide the method for granting future building rights in the complex.

The top proposal, first suggested by developers, is to assign a certain number of vehicle trips to every parcel in the Irvine Business Complex. Developers could then apply to build offices, homes, warehouses or other structures that would not generate more vehicle trips than had been set aside for the land.

If the council chooses the vehicle-trip method, planners will need to conduct more studies of its impact. More public hearings also would be required once those studies were complete.