Costa Mesa residents will have three opportunities in the coming weeks to participate in the final planning phase of the Fairview Developmental Center.
The city will first be holding a town hall Thursday, July 23 at the Norma Hertzog Community Center. Officials will go over the revised draft specific plan of the property, which was released last week and incorporates public comments received in the spring. The document establishes land use, traffic and infrastructure requirements for the project, and lays out the guidelines for processing development applications later.
Carrie Tai, the city’s economic and development services director, said the goal of the town hall is to update residents on “how the planning documents have evolved over the past couple of months” so they can be prepared for the forthcoming decision-making meetings.
“These community meetings present people who have been involved with the process the opportunity to keep up, and for people who haven’t been involved the opportunity to catch up,” Tai said.
Next, the city’s Planning Commission will hold a study session on Monday, July 27, to begin its review process for the draft specific plan. Residents are again encouraged to participate and give the commissioners feedback, Tai said.
Commissioners will then hold a public hearing on Aug. 10 to formally review the plan and make recommendations to the City Council, which is expected to discuss the document in September. Tai said the commission will be advising the City Council on how much open space, which housing types and the maximum number of residential units to include in the final planning document.
The revised specific plan includes clarifications on whether certain types of community-based uses, such as daycares and libraries, will be allowed at the site, Tai said. The updated document also incorporated new parking requirements after the City Council provided directions for removing residential parking minimums. Other elements, such as the types of housing and density of potential developments, are unchanged from the previous draft document, Tai said.
The 115-acre Fairview Developmental Center opened in 1959 as a state-operated residential care facility. By its closure in 2015, the hospital had served thousands of people with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
In 2022, Costa Mesa received $3.5 million in state funding to plan the redevelopment of the Fairview site into a mixed-use village. The city’s housing element estimates the property could accommodate at least 2,300 housing units, which would help the city meet the state’s mandate to support the construction of at least 11,760 new homes by the end of the decade. At least 40% of that new housing should be affordable for low- to very-low-income families, state officials have said.
The draft specific plan studied the financial and environmental impact of developing 2,300 residential units, the lowest density requirement identified in the housing element, up to a maximum of 4,000 units.