Residents gearing up for Home Ranch fight

Jennifer Kho

SOUTH COAST METRO -- Four homeowners associations are teaming up to

oppose C.J. Segerstrom & Sons’ revised Home Ranch proposal.

“This proposal is not any better than the last one,” said Robin

Leffler, a Mesa Verde Community Inc. board member. “The Ikea is going to

generate tremendous traffic, and it’s not just during peak hours but all

day long and more on the weekends. The air-quality impacts are not

acceptable. This is another instance of developments in north Costa Mesa

asking for a big exception to the general plan.”

The associations -- Mesa North Community Assn., Halecrest/Hall of Fame

Homeowners Assn., Mesa Del Mar Homeowners Assn. and Mesa Verde Community

Inc. -- want the city to consider a moratorium on significant deviations

from the city’s general plan limits.

But Paul Freeman, a C.J. Segerstrom & Sons spokesman, said the general

plan requirements for the Home Ranch site are unreasonable.

“Cities are required to continually update their general plan,” he

said. “It’s not intended to be something that remains absolutely

unchanged forever. The general plan on its face is unreasonable. It calls

for an industrial park, first of all, and also for a [density] that could

never be built because the [traffic allotment] is so low. Home Ranch is

going to be a marathon not a sprint, and I think the issue should be

what’s reasonable.”

The Home Ranch proposal is a 90-acre project, originally scheduled for

Planning Commission review in June, that was redesigned to add housing,

as well as reduce building heights and the square-foot density of the

office space.

The modified proposal for the site, a lima bean farm bordered by the

San Diego Freeway, Fairview Road, Harbor Boulevard and Sunflower Avenue,

calls for a 17-acre Ikea furniture store, 950,000 square feet of office

space and more than 900 homes.

Freeman said the revised project will have less effect on the city

than the original project.

“There will be appreciably less traffic because of the large amount --

nearly half -- of the office space that was eliminated,” Freeman said.

“And the heights will be very different. We’re reducing the maximum

height from nine stories to four, with an average height of two stories.”

The 1990 general plan allows light industrial and medium-density

residential use on the land.

Leffler said she is not opposed to switching industrial buildings to

office buildings, which she considers a minor change, but is opposed to

exceeding the general plan’s traffic and density limits.

Gilbert Collins, president of the Halecrest/Hall of Fame Homeowners

Assn., said his association members are worried the project could cause

an increase in traffic, urban runoff and strain fire and police services.

Members are also worried the Ikea could be built as a “gigantic, ugly,

blue and yellow box, which would not go along with the city’s goal of

having aesthetically pleasing architecture,” he said.

John Burkhard, Mesa North Community Assn. president, said his biggest

problem with the plan is that the housing proposed is high density.

Freeman said the company is open to discussing different housing

possibilities, as well as the Ikea architecture, and that it has

scheduled a community meeting to discuss the project at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15

at the Neighborhood Community Center, 1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa.

The project’s draft environmental report is available for public

review at City Hall, the Mesa Verde Library and the Costa Mesa Library.

The first public hearing on the revised plan will be at a Planning

Commission meeting scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at City Hall, 77 Fair Drive.