Should a warehouse the size of five Costcos operate within 500 feet of multi-family homes?
That’s what the Irvine City Council will decide in February for a project proposal at the intersection of Von Karman Avenue and Alton Parkway in the Irvine Business Complex.
Across the street are two modern apartment complexes, the Broadstone Edition and Rize Irvine.
The issue of whether to permit the 540,000-square-foot warehouse so close to homes twice came to the council in January.
Both times, the council postponed a vote on the matter.
In February, the six-member board is slated to consider citywide warehouse regulations, including perhaps a ban on large warehouses, and also, for a third time, this particular proposal in the IBC.
“I frankly fear that the master planning process as it relates to the Irvine Business Complex will just be blasted to smithereens by this project,” Mayor Larry Agran said of his concerns.
The proposal from Von Alton I, LLC, is to demolish a nine-building corporate center to develop a 541,344-square-foot warehouse facility across two buildings, each 49 feet tall.
The 25-acre project would include close to 100 truck bays and fundamentally change the nature of traffic through the IBC, Agran worried.
The IBC is one of three areas in the city where the council has proposed to add significantly more housing in the coming years, the other two being around the Great Park and the Spectrum.
In October, the council approved zoning for up to 15,000 residential units in the IBC to help it meet state housing needs.
Agran said he doubts that a thriving residential community can include a large warehouse at its core.
“The whole idea of creating walkable communities is absolutely destroyed by a warehouse complex that’s an entire square block,” he said. “Walkable communities mean you have to have retail. You have to have shopping, groceries, nightlife and all kinds of things that are of interest.”
“I can’t imagine anything less interesting than a warehouse,” he added.
Still, at the last City Council meeting, Agran motioned not to vote against the project but to postpone the vote for another two weeks.
He said he wanted city staff and the permit applicants to “put their heads together” to sort through some issues.
Later, in an interview, he clarified that he wanted an extra two weeks to try to persuade the developers to apply to build a mixed-use or residential property instead.
“My understanding is that the capital partners here also had some interest in residential development, which, of course, would be appropriate, in my view, in the IBC,” Agran said. “So, I thought a period of a couple of weeks here might allow for some serious discussion that might change the entire character of the situation.”
“I just think there’s some chance for residential or mixed-use development on that prime property, and if there is — let’s find that out in the next couple of weeks before making any decisions,” he added. “Warehousing would be very troubling.”
Legal counsel for the developer disagrees.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, an attorney representing the warehouse permit applicant argued that the council has no jurisdiction to prevent his client’s project.
The City Planning Commission already approved a master plan modification to permit the site, and no one is appealing that decision, argued Sean Mastler of Cox Castle & Nicholson, a law firm with an Irvine office.
David Coulter, a resident within 500 feet of the site, had appealed the Planning Commission’s decision in November. But, he withdrew his appeal in December.
Mastler pointed to several instances in the past decade when the City Council dismissed a public hearing after an appellant withdrew his appeal.
Doing otherwise in this case would defy precedent, he argued.
“No member of this body called the matter up to the council for review, and there were no other appeals. So, there’s no active appellant sitting here today,” Mastler said.
Ajit Thind, an attorney hired by the city to represent Irvine on this matter, proceeded to argue that Irvine’s zoning code grants the City Council jurisdiction even though there is no active appellant.
“I believe the strongest, most plausible interpretation of the zoning code is that the mere withdrawal of an appeal by the appellant does not then divest the City Council of jurisdiction,” Thind said.
“It’s very possible that in the past the council or the Planning Commission may have taken inconsistent actions on that,” he said. “It’s possible that the question was never raised with legal counsel and was never analyzed. But those past actions cannot then somehow override the text of the zoning code.”
Agran added that he would have appealed the project himself.
“In fact, I think I spoke to the city manager about that, but he informed me that somebody had appealed it, and, therefore, there was no reason for me to appeal,” Agran said. “I think this goes to the legal question of our maintaining jurisdiction.”
Active appellant or not, the project proposal turned the heads of many neighbors.
Last May, the city mailed what it called a “Hello Neighbor” letter regarding the proposed project to all property owners and residential occupants within 500 feet of the project site.
Subsequently, the city received more than 20 comments in opposition to the project. Residents expressed concerns regarding incompatible land use, possible traffic and noise congestion, possible air pollution and preference for retail or residential projects.
Nevertheless, the Planning Commission approved the master plan modification for the warehouse in November by a vote of 3-2.
Within a week, Coulter filed his appeal. In it, he argued the warehouse would lead to increased pollution with “vibration, air and noise, and would negatively impact property values in the surrounding neighborhood,” said city staffer Hernan DeSantos.
DeSantos said that after review the city found Coulter’s appeals to be “without merit.”
No matter, Agran and several other councilmembers might decide the project simply does not belong in the IBC.
And, they might seek additional restrictions against large warehouses across the city.
“Frankly, I have strong doubts that warehouses of the magnitude that have come upon us here can be accommodated anywhere in Irvine,” Agran said earlier in January. “This seems to me so out of scale that we probably ought to have a prohibition on that kind of thing.”
