• Categories

        • Our Authors

        • Recent Posts

        • Resources

    • Archived Posts

    • Archived Newspapers

  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us
  • DONATE

Select Page

Council Rejects Airport Commission’s Warning: Moves Forward on 4-1 Vote with Plan to Build 15,000 Housing Units in the IBC

by

On October 8th, the Irvine City Council voted 4-1 (with Vice Mayor Larry Agran voting NO) to move forward with a plan to add some 15,000 housing units in the Irvine Business Complex (IBC), next to John Wayne Airport. In doing so, the Council majority ignored warnings from the state’s Airport Land Use Commission that building so many units in the IBC conflicts with the existing land use plan for the airport area, raising safety and noise concerns.
 
Irvine was directed by the state to increase its affordable housing stock. An amendment to the City’s General Plan to implement the state mandate by building up to 57,656 units passed the City Council back in August on another 4-1 vote, with Larry Agran voting against it.
 
In making the motion at the August 13th Council meeting to adopt the General Plan Amendment, Councilmember Tammy Kim called the plan “smart, sustainable planning” and urged the Council to quickly approve it.
 
When it came time for Agran to speak at that meeting, he noted that six previous General Plan Amendments in the City’s history had been done carefully and with broad discussion, saying: “We took every possible minute that was available to us, to get it right.”
 
Agran argued that it isn’t manageable to build 57,656 units, saying: “The environmental documentation shows that we will have deteriorating air quality that can’t be mitigated, greenhouse gas emissions that apparently can’t be mitigated, adverse land-use effects that can’t be mitigated, additional noise that can’t be mitigated, and traffic problems that can’t be addressed.”
 
Agran said that giving developers the green light to build tens of thousands of new apartments, condos and housing units — with only a few hundred of those units being designated and built as affordable housing in the next few years — would “blow up five decades of remarkably successful master-planning in Irvine.”

Noting that the deadline to respond to the state is still months away, Agran urged the Council to use that time to negotiate a deal with the Irvine Company — which owns 35,000 apartment units in town, almost all of them rented at market rates — to sharply cut the rent of 5,000 of those units so they become affordable housing. Agran said his creative solution would meet the state’s mandate without bringing more traffic to Irvine or otherwise impacting current residents’ quality of life.

Roger Bloom

LATEST WEATHER

Irvine, CA
48°
Clear
7 am8 am9 am10 am11 am
50°F
55°F
63°F
66°F
70°F

Follow Us

advertisement

Skip to content