Santa Ana Lowers Density but Council Irks Residents by Exempting 557 Units

When the Santa Ana City Council voted last April to slash density limits throughout the city, residents in the audience that night stood and cheered.

But the vote didn’t count. The city clerk had not published a notice of the public hearing in a newspaper. So Monday night--notice given--the council went at it again and approved the lower limits once more. But this time many residents cursed the vote instead of cheering it.

The difference? The council had exempted from the new density limits nine apartment and condominium projects totaling 557 units--all exceeding the new limits of the General Plan amendment.

In April, the council had voted to make no exceptions for developments that had already been approved but were still without building permits and would exceed the new limits. Those developers would have had to go back to the drawing board and submit entirely new plans.

But Monday night, citing their obligation to developers who had gone forward with their high-density plans with the city’s blessing, the council exempted the nine projects from the stricter density limits.

“I wish I could vote against the motion, but I’m afraid I could not,” Councilman Wilson Hart said. “We are guilty of moving too slowly, of recognizing the consequences of what we were doing too slowly. . . . We as a City Council have in some fashion encouraged the developers to go forward, and they should not bear the consequences.”

Councilman Miguel Pulido, who was elected to the council after most of the projects in question had been approved, agreed that voting to allow them to proceed was “a moral question. . . . It’s wrong to cut them short right before they’re ready to go.”

Susan Tully, a Heninger Park resident who asked the council to exempt just two redevelopment projects to which the city is contractually obligated, said the vote to exempt all nine sent a “loud and clear” message to neighborhood groups.

“It was more than just some projects to the City Council,” Tully said. “It was who really counts in the city? Who are you really listening to? The message they gave us was ‘Gee, we’re giving you street improvements, so shut up and let us be kind to the developers. They’ve got money invested here.’ Well, what the hell do we they think we’ve got invested?”

During the past two years, developers have built more than 3,000 apartment units in Santa Ana--many of them with densities of 100 units per acre or more. The amended General Plan imposes a limit of 35 units per acre in most areas of the city zoned for high-density residential construction and completely bars apartment construction on some heavily traveled thoroughfares.

In four “urban village” areas of the city, developers may still build apartments of higher densities: North Main Place, Civic Center, Hutton Centre and South Coast Metro. David Fraunfelder, president of the Historic French Park Homeowners Assn., called the Monday night vote “a tremendous setback for the neighborhood movement. I won’t be back here for a long, long time.”

Fraunfelder, as he did in April, made an impassioned plea to the council to deny approval of projects such as the four-story, 54-unit apartment complex planned for a 0.91-acre lot at Flower and 10th streets.

“Within a few months, you will have laundry hanging out the balconies and enough junk cars to start a garage,” Fraunfelder said. “These types of projects devastate our city. Do you want four stories of laundry right next to your house?”

The Flower Street project’s density is about 60 units per acre--right at the old limit but almost twice the new 35-units-per-acre limit for that area.

The project was approved by the Planning Commission and the City Council last year. Verlyn N. Jensen, an attorney for the developer, Iraj Eftekhari, said he probably would have sued on behalf of his client if the council had voted differently Monday night.

“It’s a due process question,” Jensen said. “They have to be fair to everyone in the city.”

Mayor Dan Young said the council had not been aware in April that there were several apartment projects that “had matured to the point where they had pulled all permits except building.”

When it became clear that the whole matter would have to be heard again, Young said, the council decided to reconsider its initial decision to forgo inclusion of a grandfather clause.