Considering a new direction

Back in 1973, the city of Costa Mesa, like other aging cities,

began redeveloping some of its older parts to reinvigorate them. Out

of that plan came projects like the current Triangle Square and Costa

Mesa Courtyards shopping centers, as well as a new fire station and

neighborhood community center.

As of late, the city has begun eyeing another section of the

Westside in hopes of removing what state guidelines would consider

blight in need of redevelopment. On Monday, the Planning Commission

approved a preliminary redevelopment zone that includes some property

owners who would rather not be included for various reasons,

including that of potential eminent domain.

On Thursday, City Editor James Meier visited Costa Mesa City Hall

to chat with Mike Robinson, the city’s planning and redevelopment

manager, about these issues, as well as the history of redevelopment

and the process it must go through.

Tell me a little about the history of the downtown redevelopment

project.

Well, the redevelopment plan was adopted in 1973, so it was one of

the earlier redevelopment plans in the area. It was adopted primarily

to look at circulation problems we have in the area, land-use

incompatibility and structural obsolescence. Newport Boulevard is

kind of the intersection of two different subdivision patterns meet.

17th Street on the Westside doesn’t match 17th Street on the

Eastside. So one of the major things we looked at was solving those

circulation problems.

How was the initial project area determined?

State law has a fairly well prescribed process of establishing

what they first call a survey area. If you’re looking at establishing

a redevelopment area, you establish a survey area of a larger

boundary that requires further studies to determine if it matches the

criteria of state law in terms of blighting influences and things of

that nature.

So they established a survey area that pretty much went from north

of 19th Street all the way down to our southern city limits around

15th and 16th streets, from Orange Avenue over to about Anaheim

Avenue. The actual downtown redevelopment plan is actually smaller

than that and really only goes from 17th to 19th streets and includes

about 200 acres.

How long has the latest proposal to add about 434 acres to the

project area been in the works?

That started about a year ago. The [Redevelopment] Agency did a

feasibility study. We identified a larger portion of the Westside

area for possible inclusion in an expanded redevelopment area. As a

result of that study, the consultant said only a portion of what the

agency wanted in the area met the criteria of state law, so they

adopted a survey area that’s slightly smaller.

I think the initial study considered 1,000 acres on the Westside.

They recommended about 800 acres. From that survey area, they did

additional research and now we’re down to the 434 acres that they

recommended for inclusion.

Is there a chance it’ll pare down even more?

Yeah. Like I said, it’s always been a process of paring down the

area. Once we adopt the preliminary plan, which the Planning

Commission recommended, that kind of established the outside

boundaries of what the redevelopment area will be. We can always make

it smaller and delete properties, but we can’t add anymore once the

preliminary plans have been adopted.

Why was this area chosen as opposed to any other area on the

Westside?

Well, it started with the Westside Specific Plan, which we started

back in 1998. There was a concern from the City Council that the

Westside is the oldest part of the city, it has a lot of mixed uses,

with older infrastructure in terms of streets and utilities, and it

just seemed to be the area that needed the most attention. So the

Westside Specific Plan looked at the entire Westside of about 1,800

acres, and then we focused that down to what were really the major

areas of concern. That was the 19th Street commercial district and

some of the industrial properties in the area.

Some of the business owners who oppose being included in the

redevelopment zone say their property values will drop dramatically

while the city stands to gain quite a bit monetarily. First of all,

is this indeed the case?

I wouldn’t think so. No, because the purpose of a redevelopment

area is to improve property values and the only way the agency gets

any revenue is if property values increase. Redevelopment agencies

are limited by what’s called tax increment financing, where once a

redevelopment plan is adopted, the property tax levels are frozen

basically at that point and the agency gets any additional increase

in taxes above that.

How long of a duration would something like that take?

The maximum time limit for a redevelopment plan is 30 years. When

our plan was adopted in 1973, it had a 40-year life. But state

legislation in 1994 really reduced that time through the

Redevelopment Reform Act. It also reduced the time that you could

exercise your eminent domain power to acquire property.

At this point, are there any plans to take properties by eminent

domain?

That’s something that will be decided later on. Again, through the

redevelopment grant process, the first step you do is prepare a

preliminary plan, which is the stage we’re at now that basically is

the first official action by the agency to start a redevelopment

area. It’s written pretty general and allows a lot of flexibility.

Right now, it basically says we are interested in establishing a

redevelopment area.

Once that plan’s adopted, then over the next six to eight months,

we’ll work with our consultants, the agency and affected property

owners to identify what specific projects will be included in the

area and also what the agency’s eminent domain policy will be.

And they can tailor that eminent domain policy however they see

fit. They can have it for the entire redevelopment area, they can

limit it to a certain area, they can exclude residential properties

or industrial properties, so right now, it’s just a statement of

interest that the agency is interested in using eminent domain and

over the next six to eight months, we’ll fine tune that.

So is everything very preliminary at this point?

Yes, if you look at the preliminary plan, it just reiterates what

state law allows for a redevelopment agency to do for infrastructural

improvements, land acquisition, under-grounding utilities. We’re

probably at least a year away from adopting a final plan.

What’s the very next step after the City Council, acting as the

city’s Redevelopment Agency, adopts it?

That adoption of the preliminary plan triggers a lot of other

requirements. We have to send notice to all of the other taxing

agencies involved -- the county, school district, the mosquito

abatement district because, again, with that tax increment financing,

the [Redevelopment] Agency gets about 70% of the new taxes. The other

agencies get the baseline allocation, whatever they had been getting

prior to the plan being adopted. And the 30% the agency doesn’t get

is divided between the school district, the county and other

agencies. So we have to notify them that we are moving forward.

Depending on the eminent domain policy and what the boundaries

are, if you have a plan and you have the power of eminent domain to

acquire property that is occupied by low- and moderate-income

housing, you have to form a Project Area Committee. So within 100

days of adopting the preliminary plan, we have to have an election

process to form the Project Area Committee.

And, as part of that, we’re going to have a series of community

round table meetings to work with property owners to explain what our

redevelopment process is and, because of the concern we’ve had from

the industrial property owners, we’ve already had two of those and

we’ll have three more in the next couple of months.

Are those meetings making progress?

I think it’s been difficult. I think the first two we had were

with the industrial property owners who seem to be the most concerned

and, unfortunately, they’re pretty well set and mounting opposition

to the plan already, so I don’t think we’ve been able to achieve our

goal of trying to educate the public before they took action because

they’ve kind of taken that on their own.

Are any of their arguments legit from your point of view?

Well, I think the threat of eminent domain is probably the first

thing people think of when you mention the word redevelopment. But,

again, we can tailor our eminent domain property. If there’s enough

concern, we can eliminate the power of eminent domain over industrial

property or we can focus it on the 19th Street commercial district.

Again, that’s something we’ll work with the agency and community with

over the next six to eight months to fine tune that property.

Going back for a second, how is the previous redevelopment zone

doing?

I think it’s doing fairly well, overall. I think we’ve done a lot

of projects in there -- the Costa Mesa Courtyards shopping center;

obviously Triangle Square has had some problems now, but that may be

a function of a lot of things outside the agency’s control like the

general economy and the type of special retail uses that are designed

for that. They’re hardest hit by the economy.

We’ve been able to do public improvements in the Lions Park area

with the fire station and the neighborhood community center,

realigning 17th Street so the traffic flows easier. Also, widening

and realigning 19th Street.

Any final thoughts?

No, other than it is a long process, a very detailed process.

Hopefully, we can develop a more positive relationship with the

business community and residents and try to work through some of

these initial issues we have with each other and hopefully turn their

energies into something more positive so we can work together to come

up with a plan that’s more supported by the community.