EDITORIAL

Look around Costa Mesa and you’ll see plenty of terrible developments:

worn-down strip malls, awful-looking restaurants and a general mishmash

of buildings pressed together.

There are pockets of far superior, even first-class projects: the new

Harbor Center and South Coast Plaza, with its ongoing improvements, are

obvious examples.

And there is one more sitting before the City Council on Monday night:

Town Center.

The project, being put together by C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, the Orange

County Performing Arts Center and Commonwealth Partners LLC, has been the

target of much heated criticism from council members and residents,

largely because of its size and location within an area bordered by

Bristol Street, Sunflower Avenue, Avenue of the Arts and the San Diego

Freeway.

Plans for the 54-acre project call for a pedestrian-oriented cultural

arts district along Avenue of the Arts, first-class restaurants and a

“building without walls” glass design that would expose the Noguchi

Californian Sculpture Garden.

Particular vitriol has been tossed at Commonwealth’s part of the plan,

which is situated around the Noguchi garden and bordered by the freeway,

Bristol, Anton Boulevard and Avenue of the Arts.

The opposition -- which has delayed this plan for months -- may be due

in part to Commonwealth’s “outsider” status, which makes it an easier

target than Costa Mesa patron Henry Segerstrom.

But Commonwealth has acted nothing like a money-hungry developer. The

plans it has presented are well laid out, with a emphasis on improving

the look and accessibility of the Noguchi garden.

Commonwealth also has said that 1% of the money it spends on the

project will be put toward art, such as rotating platforms to display

public art or art integrated into the paving or street furniture, a

proposal that some on the council saw as a calculated trade-off.

But what the company is proposing for its land would add a sparkling

dimension to South Coast Metro, which has the potential to be a jewel not

only of Costa Mesa or Orange County, but all of Southern California.

Commonwealth has created world-class developments throughout

California and the country, including the 1994 redesign of Pershing

Square in Los Angeles, West Lawn Park next to Los Angeles’ Central

Library and Plaza Las Fuentes in Pasadena.

Monday night, the City Council has the chance to bring such a

development to Costa Mesa.

It should take it.