Roger Bloom

This Week’s Public Hearings Will Allow Irvine Residents to Speak Out Against Uncontrolled Warehouse Development

This week’s two public hearings will be instrumental in guiding the City’s development for the next two decades.

Many residents were shocked when Mayor Farrah Khan and Councilmembers Tammy Kim and Mike Carroll recently voted against a proposed zoning ordinance to rein-in a surge of warehouse construction projects in the Irvine Business Complex (IBC) and Spectrum areas.

Councilmember Larry Agran proposed an ordinance, recommended by the Planning Commission, that would protect residents by amending the City’s zoning code to limit warehouse hours of operation and the amount of noise or truck traffic it generates.

Planning Commissioner MaryAnn Gaido said: “Residents of the IBC and Spectrum deserve the same protections of master planning enjoyed by the rest of Irvine’s residents. Putting a massive warehouse next to a residential development is clearly wrong, but that’s exactly what we’re looking at if we don’t implement any control measures.”

Construction of the Veterans Memorial Park & Gardens to Begin

With demolition and site clean-up scheduled to begin in the next few weeks, the Veterans Memorial Park & Gardens will soon become a reality.

This marks a hard-won victory for Irvine Councilmember Larry Agran, veterans and their families, and the wider Irvine community that has endured a decade-long fight that has had more ups and downs than the Great Park Balloon.

Back in 2014, he won unanimous Council support for a State-funded Veterans Memorial Park to be built on the so-called “ARDA” site at the northern edge of the Great Park.

Soon after that vote, the project was turned into a political football when mega-developer FivePoint decided they wanted the valuable City-owned ARDA site for their own lucrative office, industrial, and residential development projects.

Nine years after the unanimous Council vote, the project is now back on track. Agran has praised the current City Council and planning staff for “heeding both the expressed will of Irvine voters and the moral imperative to properly honor the service and sacrifice of those who were posted at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and indeed all of our veterans and their families.”