City eyes residential condo conversions

Less than two weeks after putting a moratorium on industrial park subdivisions, the Costa Mesa City Council may also temporarily block residential condo conversions while the city beefs up the standards building owners must meet.

The council on Tuesday will discuss a moratorium, which would last 45 days and could be extended to a total of two years.

If a building owner wants to sell existing rental units, the city has to approve a condo conversion.

Owners must meet certain standards for parking, open space and other amenities, but some city officials have wondered if the standards are high enough.

Some of the buildings that owners want to convert for sale are old, and they may have infrastructure problems that can be expensive for the eventual buyers to fix, said Councilman Eric Bever, who asked for the moratorium.

“The concerns I have are with regard to the health, safety and welfare of the consumers in our community,” he said. “I think a real simple approach would be to require that buildings be brought up to the current Uniform Building Code.”

In the 1990s and early 2000s the city got few condo conversion requests, Costa Mesa development services director Don Lamm said, but in the last 18 months there’s been “a growing trend” of developers buying buildings to convert.

Since the beginning of 2006, the city has approved conversion of 20 developments containing 171 units.

“Almost every council member has said in the last six months, ‘Are these good or bad for the community,’ ” Lamm said.

They’re good from the standpoint that owners will invest money in fixing up the property, but it’s not clear how shrinking the pool of rental apartments affects the city, he added.

City officials ultimately want more ownership housing, so some of the existing rules may favor condo conversions “without regard to possible downsides,” Bever said.

Some see a downside to the possible moratorium. Developer Barry Saywitz, who has had four condo conversions approved in the last two months and has two under consideration, said his projects already meet high standards and he wants to be able to keep them moving.

“If there is a moratorium, I would hope and expect they would have a grace period to allow people who have already done the homework … on the standards that they have today to continue with those projects,” he said.