Pro-park folk eye 5-acre parcel

Alicia Robinson

Even though it’s zoned for high-density housing, a 5-acre piece of

vacant land on Harbor Boulevard looks to city officials like a

partial answer to Costa Mesa’s lack of public recreation space.

A proposal to rezone the property, which is part of the Fairview

Developmental Center, will come before the city’s Planning Commission

today.

But here’s the rub: While the city controls the zoning, the state

owns the property and wants to sell it to raise money to help fill an

estimated $8-billion deficit.

The parcel is part of a 54-acre site that the city originally

zoned for public use. In 1985 the land was rezoned at the state’s

request for high-density residential development, and 563 rental

units of low- to moderate-income housing were subsequently built

there, but 5 acres were never developed.

In a quest to increase parkland, the City Council last summer

began to review the zoning of all publicly held properties in the

city that might go up for sale, Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder

said.

The Fairview Developmental Center parcel looked like a good

candidate for recreational uses, and existing zoning elsewhere in the

city allows enough housing units to meet state requirements.

“The city’s best interest of that land is for

institutional/recreational use,” Planning Commission chairman Bruce

Garlich said. “There are no bad guys in this. The state’s looking at

it from the state’s point of view, [and] the city’s looking at it

from the city’s point of view.”

Officials at the state’s Department of General Services strongly

oppose the potential zoning change, in part because lower-density

zoning would greatly reduce the property’s sale value. And with

Orange County’s severe housing shortage, it’s a bad idea to scrap the

100 units that could be developed under the current zoning, said

General Services Department spokesman Matt Bender.

“It’s been city policy for the last 20 years to encourage the

development of high-density housing in this location,” Bender said.

“We see no compelling reason to change that now, and in fact, there

are reasons to continue the current zoning.”

The state hasn’t officially decided which properties it will sell,

but the Harbor Boulevard parcel is a likely candidate, and “the

proposed action will hinder the state’s efforts to sell the

property,” he said.

Garlich said if the property goes on the market, the city may be

interested in buying it, but that could pose its own problem.

“Whether we would want to buy it or not would, I guess, depend on

our ability to pay for it,” he said.

The Planning Commission meeting is at 6:30 p.m. today at City

Hall, 77 Fair Drive.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers government and politics. She may be

reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.