City considering its zoning options

Deirdre Newman

A plan being tossed around to sell the Orange County Fairgrounds has

caused some City Council members to call for more proactive city

zoning.

Assemblyman John Campbell has proposed selling the state-owned

fairgrounds and moving the fair operations to the planned Great Park

at the closed El Toro Marine Air Base as part of a proposal to help

balance the state budget.

On Monday, Councilwoman Libby Cowan suggested examining publicly

owned property in the city, such as the fairgrounds, to make sure it

gets zoned in ways that reflect the city’s goals.

“We might not always hear about properties coming on the market

and then all of a sudden, it comes in front of us and we say, ‘wait a

minute,’” Cowan said. “There’s no benefit if we’re not proactive.”

Mayor Gary Monahan agreed that this should be a priority and

requested City Manager Allan Roeder follow up on it.

Assistant Development Services Director Perry Valantine said there

are a few ways to specify the zoning of properties for the future.

“The basic idea is to make a decision ahead of time as to what we

would do with these properties if we were faced with some alternative

development,” Valantine said. “Exactly how we would do that or how we

would enact it is something we would have to determine through this

study.”

The fairgrounds is currently zoned agricultural. Instead of

waiting to see if the site will be sold and who will develop the

property, the city should also zone it for parks, open space and/or

low-density housing just to be safe, Cowan said.

“We know that we don’t like dense housing, so if indeed we have an

opportunity, let’s go back in and do an underlying zoning of the

fairground,” Cowan said. “Let’s proactively identify it as

institutional and recreational and/or [low-density housing] so no one

comes in with a planned development that can be built out to some

crazy density.”

While the fairgrounds is the most recent example, there are other

properties around the city as well that merit zoning scrutiny, like

Bristol Street Mini Storage, which is owned by the county, Monahan

said. Its lease expires on Aug. 31.

“We need to rezone it and let whoever they’re going to cut a deal

with know what they’re going to have there,” Monahan said.

More proactive zoning might also have helped the Coast Community

College District have an easier time in its effort to develop an

apartment complex for the property where its current headquarters

are. The first proposal it issued asked developers to create a

project with a minimum number of units that exceeds the city’s

density allowance.

“Had we put out something that said, ‘if the college district

vacates the property, the city would rezone it to [medium-density],’

then they would have known this is the kind of density we could

expect here,” Valantine said. “Then maybe they would have asked for

bids that were more consistent with our plans.”

Former Mayor Sandra Genis said she thinks it’s worthwhile for the

city to start considering which properties it might like to obtain in

the future. But if the city goes as far as changing the general plan

for a certain property, it would involve significant and expensive

documentation, including an environmental impact report, Genis said.

“I think the city should be establishing an acquisition wish list,

but I don’t want us picking up the tab for [environmental impact

reports] that really should be done by developers, especially not in

this budgetary climate,” Genis said.

If the city sets a certain zoning for a property and a developer

who buys it doesn’t like the zoning, they can always ask for a zoning

change, Monahan said.