District issues new apartment plan

Deirdre Newman

Officials with the Coast Community College District have issued a new

set of guidelines for an apartment project near Orange Coast College,

one that does not ask developers to exceed limits set by the city.

The request, approved by the board of directors on Wednesday,

calls for a multifamily rental project containing a minimum of 250

units. The district plans to lease the land on the corner of Adams

Avenue and Pinecreek Drive near OCC.

The board was poised to select a bidder in November, but chose to

abandon the process and start over, citing unclearness and confusion

in the request.

It will now be up to developers to decide how many apartments they

want to build and whether they want to exceed the city’s maximum

density, board member Walt Howald said.

“We put [the project] in a position where it’s between the

developer and the city, and that’s appropriate because that’s the

city’s jurisdiction,” Howald said.

The original request asked developers to design an apartment

project with at least 304 units on a lot of indefinite size,

described as a minimum of 12.14 acres and a maximum of 13.77 acres.

This caused confusion, since developers based their projects on

different size lots, Howald said in November.

This time, the board chose the maximum acreage of 13.77 acres. If

a developer chose to build the minimum of 250 units, that would

equate to 18.1 units per acre, just below the city’s maximum of 20

units per acre.

The old request asked for rent between $800,000 and $900,000 per

year. The new one spells out that the initial annual rent should be a

minimum of $900,000. Howald said this aspect of the request is the

most significant to the district because it is counting on the

project to generate a substantial amount of money. In August, the

district raised its enrollment fees by 60% to deal with a funding cut

of $4 million from the state.

“I think the purpose of the project, as determined by the board,

is to develop alternate sources of income so we’ll be in a better

position to provide classes and stabilize income for our educational

mission,” Howald said.

Resident Mike Berry, who took issue with the first request for

exceeding the city’s allowable density, said he is still concerned

about the project because the district would lease the land instead

of selling it.

“That means whoever builds those apartments can never move or

transfer ownership on the apartments,” Berry said. “So it means

they’ll never fix them up because they won’t have ownership over them

at the end.”

The deadline for the district to receive the proposals is Jan. 21.

The board will consider the proposals on Feb. 4.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.