"VISIONING" THE FAIRVIEW DEVELOPMENTAL CENTER SITE

THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF MEETINGS ON THE FDC

On Thursday, November 2, 2023 I trekked across town from my far Eastside home to the Costa Mesa Senior Center for the first of what is to be a series of community meetings to discuss the future of the 112+ acre site of the Fairview Developmental Center (FDC) - near the center of Costa Mesa.

CHANGING TREATMENT MEANS SURPLUS LAND

This city-sponsored, consultant-facilitated gathering was intended to provide an opportunity for residents and other interested parties to present their views of how this site may be used in the future.  The State of California has changed the model of how they handle folks with “developmental” issues - closing a few large sites like the FDC around the state and choosing, instead, to go to a smaller “home” model.  This freed-up several hundred acres of state-owned property, which will be sold off.  The State gave Costa Mesa $3.5 million to do the planning, re-zoning, etc., for this site, after which The State will select a Master Builder to fulfill the plans.

STATE GIVE AND TAKE

A couple sidebars - First, The State has required our city to plan for - and zone for - 11,760 more dwelling units (our current Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) over the next 6 years. (We’re already 2 years  into the 8-year cycle).  And, despite the fact that the FDC site will become available, The State dropped another shoe when it announced that it was withholding 15 acres of that site for an Emergency Operations Center to serve Southern California - which included a 35,000 square foot Administration Building, a 20,000 square foot warehouse, a helipad for large military-style choppers to come and go AND a 120 foot communications tower, resplendent with gaudy orange and white paint and flashing lights.

A VERY SMALL TURNOUT

Of the 50 or so attendees, many were familiar faces - the “usual suspects”.  I recognized former council member and mayor Sandra Genis, former council members Wendy Leece and Jay Humphrey and a couple current planning commissioners.  Also, residents Cynthia McDonald and Rick Huffman (the husband and wife team who have done much of the heavy-lifting on housing-related issues in our city for more than a decade) showed up, armed with the Specific Plan for the Sonoma Site - a similar site in Northern California.  I don’t always agree with their solutions to issues, but I ALWAYS appreciate their efforts.  There were NO current council members at this meeting - perhaps fearing being sandbagged into speaking, as was the case at the recent state-sponsored meeting at the FDC.

THE PREVIOUS MEETING

About that meeting -  The State, through their consultant, held a similar meeting at the FDC site to gather input.  Fewer than 100 people showed up for that one and none came away satisfied with the results.  Costa Mesa Brief covered that meeting, but there was NO video coverage by The City, or anyone else, of this meeting.

BACK TO THIS MEETING

This meeting was optimistically set up the  Great Room at the Costa Mesa Senior Center for 192 participants.  Snacks and drinks were provided, as was a daycare center for those who had to bring children to this event.  I say “optimistically” because just 50 people showed up for this very important event.  This was to be an “English-only” event, with a “Spanish-only” event to be held at the same venue the next night. (More on that at the end of this report).  Plus, there is scheduled a virtual (Zoom) meeting for Monday, November 6th at 6 p.m.

AGAIN, NOTIFICATION IS AN ISSUE

Some attendees complained about not having received notification of this meeting until the day before via an email blast.  From my standpoint, apparently because I actually DO pay attention to these things, I received at least a half dozen notices and alerts about this series of meetings over the past week or so.

CITY STAFF AND CONSULTANTS MODERATED THE EVENING

The meeting began shortly after 6 p.m. when city staffer Sherry Vander Dusen kicked it off with an introduction of the purpose, then handed the ball off to Suzanne Schwab of the consulting firm, Placeworks.  She, and her associate, Karen Gulley, ran the rest of the meeting and did their very best to stay on the schedule included in the very helpful handout package.

THE PURPOSE

The purpose of this meeting was to: 

1-Start a dialogue and share information with the community, 

2-Gather input for the Vision and Guiding Principles

3-Listen to community ideas and concerns

4-Outcome: a community led draft vision statement and set of guiding principles

HISTORY AND PROJECTIONS
The consultants provided some background of the site, a description of the current facilities, a summary of State and City actions which included a projection of the completion of this process by September, 2025.

PROCESS SCHEDULE

They also described their role in this 2-year process and the community’s opportunities for input, listed as:

Website - FDCHousingPlan.com

Workshops - 4 throughout the process each will be provided in multiple formats:

      English

      Spanish

      Virtual

City Council Study Sessions - 2 updates/check-ins, will be public meetings.

HOUSING GOAL

They spoke about the City’s Housing Goal based on the as-yet uncertified Housing Element.  The City and State agree that housing shall be the priority use for this site and spoke briefly of a 2,300 units minimum use for the site (23 units per acre), of which 40% would be Low and Very Low Income Housing.  They provided a chart defining the income levels.

SURROUNDING USES AND TREES

They discussed the existing surrounding land uses, bike paths and roadways.  They spoke of the arborist hired to evaluate the existing tree canopy - defined at this time as 790 mature trees on the site.

TYPES OF HOUSING

They gave examples of potential housing types, ranging from 10-17 units per acre and progressing to those types that would be in the 30-100 units per acre, and showed examples of existing housing in Southern California.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

After the consultant presentation microphones were made available to participants to ask questions/make comments.  Your humble correspondent was the first to thrust his pudgy paw into the air, so I was the lead-off batter.  I told the room that if a helipad is actually included in this plan (it was NOT shown on the graphics provided), then this plan is a non-starter because NOBODY will want to live near the landing/takeoff pattern of large military-style helicopters.  Those beasts cannot be simply plopped down in a 50 square foot plot - they require runout and approach areas.  In her response to my comment Director Jennifer Le left us with a vague comment that the “helipad may not be part of this plan”, but she didn’t have a firm confirmation. Fewer than half of the attendees rose to ask questions/make comments at this point.

GROUP ACTIVITY

Following the Q & A the attendees engaged in a Group Activity, in which each group (table) discussed and summarized elements they felt were important to be considered, then each table/group (12 of them) “report out” their results.  Those “results” - large pieces of paper with thoughts scrawled on them - were taped to the back wall and participants were encouraged to fix green stickers (balls) to each element with which they agreed.  

MY TAKEAWAY

The meeting wrapped up shortly after the projected time of 8 p.m.  I came away from it cautiously optimistic.  Many of us have participated is similar meetings in past years and, in many cases, came away feeling that our thoughts/concerns fell largely on deaf ears.  Not so in this case.  And, because there are more meetings planned soon, there will be opportunities to measure the effectiveness of attendees comments.  Fingers crossed…

AN OBSERVATION UPON LEAVING

It has been my view that the FDC site could/should utilize tall buildings - 10+ stories - to house larger numbers of folks in affordable housing.  As I left the parking lot at the Senior Center I looked across the street at the Tower on 19th - the 18 story senior housing building which has around 270 units - and thought about how the FDC site could (should?) accommodate at least two or three of those structures and provide affordable housing for upwards of 5000 residents and still leave plenty of recreational space.

THE SPANISH-ONLY MEETING

On Friday, November 3rd, a similar meeting was held at the same venue.  It was crafted to provide information in Spanish to the nearly 40% of Costa Mesa’s residents who are primarily Spanish-speakers. I drove over to measure the turn-out.  The staff had, again very optimistically, provided round tables for 192 people.  They had an Irish-looking consultant delivering the message in Spanish.  When I departed at 6:25 there were 7 attendees in the room - outnumbered by staff and consultants - and one more was arriving as I left the building.  So, there were 8 people… disappointing, but not surprising.  I have no idea what kind of outreach was done to reach that demographic group.  I also have no idea what kind of questions/comments they might have made.  I DO know that somebody brought 4 pizzas and there was one child in the supervised game room made available again.

VIRTUAL MEETING MONDAY

I’m going to drop into the virtual meeting Monday, to see what kind of attendance that one generates and what kind of questions and answers are provided.  Here are the details: 

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

ZOOM MEETING ID: 821 8580 3444

PASSCODE: FDCSP1234

6PM-8PM

INFORMATION LINKS

If you want to check the official website for progress and to sign-up for information.  It’s my understanding the handout from this meeting will be posted on the website.  Here are two links for your use:

FDCHousingPlan.com

FDCHousingPlan@costamesaca.com

SO MANY WORDS, SO LITTLE INFORMATION

Yes, after all this palaver I neglected to post information about what the attendees thought.  I corrected that gaffe at a second entry, which you can read HERE

I’LL WRITE MORE

I’ll write about this as the process moves forward.  You cannot comment on the blog, but can return to my Facebook page if you wish to share a thought.