Costa Mesa council delays decision on youth arts proposal dogged by parking dispute

Whether a youth arts program will be allowed to move into a business park near John Wayne Airport remains up in the air after Costa Mesa City Council members decided Tuesday night to hold off on deciding the fate of an appeal against the proposal.

Council members said they need more time for staff members and attorneys to wade through the legal issues surrounding the appeal, especially since the group that filed it — an association representing local business owners — has sued the city over an earlier decision to allow an Islamic group to open a gathering center in the same park.

The council voted 3-0 on Tuesday to continue the hearing on the appeal until Sept. 20. Mayor Steve Mensinger and Councilman Gary Monahan were absent.

Members of the Koll-Irvine Community Assn., which encompasses the business park located south of the 405 Freeway next to the airport, asked the council to overturn a Planning Commission decision in June that would allow the Arts & Learning Conservatory to buy space in the park at 3184 Airway Ave.

The conservatory, an educational nonprofit that offers performing arts and musical theater classes, envisions using the space, Suite A, to host a summer day camp and up to six theatrical productions on weekends throughout the year.

It also would be used for administrative purposes and the conservatory’s after-school programs.

Michael Kehoe, a lawyer who is representing the Koll-Irvine group, said the association owns and manages the shared parking area in the business park, so the city doesn’t have the right to allow the conservatory to use the parking spaces without the association’s OK.

“You can’t make a finding that a party has a right to shared parking because it’s going to use its neighbors’ parking, when the neighbor objects to that,” Kehoe told the council Tuesday.

Doing so, he said, would be “a violation of the owner’s fundamental vested rights.”

In an interview Wednesday, he said the association “has property rights that, frankly, are getting trampled on.”

The association raised similar concerns in a lawsuit filed last month seeking to overturn the City Council’s vote in March to allow the Ismailis, a branch of Shia Islam, to open a center at 3184 Airway Ave., Suite J.

The space the conservatory is looking to buy is currently used by Berean Community Church, which is planning to relocate.

The Berean church has permission from the association to use some of the shared parking area, Michael Leifer, another attorney representing the association, said Wednesday. But that permission has not been extended to the conservatory, he said.

“The association is kind of the supreme authority on parking and how it’s shared,” Leifer said. “Not the city and not the Berean church.”

Berean senior pastor Peter Kim said Wednesday that he thinks the association’s issue isn’t with his church selling its space to the conservatory but rather “lingering resentment” over the council’s vote to allow the Ismailis to open their center.

Kim said he believes any parking issues resulting from the conservatory would be less than if the Berean church had decided to sell its space to another church or to a business that would need more parking space.

“If they’re so concerned about parking and that was the real issue, they would actually be thankful, you would think,” he said of the association.