County Drops Plans for Jail in Costa Mesa : Project: Residents and business groups had opposed attempts to locate a work-furlough center in industrial zone of the city.

By KEVIN JOHNSON

Nov. 18, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — Orange County authorities have abandoned plans to locate a work-furlough center for inmates in Costa Mesa, continuing a frustrating course of failed attempts to alleviate chronic overcrowding in the local jail system.

The decision came after the county met formidable opposition from residents and business groups during three separate attempts to secure a 100-bed satellite jail for non-violent offenders in the city.

“In the end, I don’t think it would have mattered where we wanted to locate it,” said Kevin Meehan, the county’s contractor for the proposed project. “There were people out there who were going to oppose it no matter what.”

Meehan said Wednesday that the county would not appeal the Costa Mesa Planning Commission’s decision to reject the plan to convert the Ana Mesa Inn on Harbor Boulevard into a satellite jail.

Costa Mesa City Manager Allan L. Roeder said the city has been willing to support such projects. He cited plans for a county low-income housing project in the city and the presence of detoxification centers as symbols of the city’s willingness to provide such resources.

“But there is a growing sense in the community that these kinds of projects are being dumped in the same (cities),” Roeder said. “We hear people saying, ‘Why don’t we ever see anything like this proposed for Newport Beach or in South County?’ ”

Conversion of the motel was the third proposal offered by Meehan’s Orange County Youth and Family Services Inc. since February to establish a corrections center in the city.

Youth and Family Services has a contract with the county Probation Department to run the countywide program, which has two other facilities in Anaheim and Buena Park. The other proposed Costa Mesa sites--one on Maple Street and the other on Harbor Boulevard--were nixed earlier this year by nearby residents who feared the center would threaten neighborhood safety.

Inmates in the work-furlough program, many of whom would be serving time for drunk driving and other misdemeanor offenses, work during the day and return to the centers to sleep at night.

The Ana Mesa site, although located in a largely industrial area of the city near the corner of Harbor and MacArthur boulevards, was scuttled because of concerns expressed by business owners in the area.

“I don’t think Costa Mesa is different than any other city in regard to these projects,” Meehan said. “The challenge is to overcome the resistance. If you don’t try to do it, it might never get done.”

Meehan said Wednesday that there were no other immediate plans to seek other locations for the center. “We’re in a wait-and-see mode now,” he said.

Roeder suggested that the county’s pursuit of a satellite jail may have been “doomed” from the start when the Maple Street site was first proposed “and we were never told anything about it.”

“As a result, I think there was a great deal of mistrust by the people in the community who were determined that the county was not going to slip anything past us,” he said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder, who earlier in the year had stressed the need for development of such centers to relieve jail overcrowding, acknowledged Wednesday that county officials had not been sensitive enough to the community’s concerns.

“I think maybe we could have handled things better, communicated better,” Wieder said. “I still think that we can do these things, but maybe somewhere else.”

Wieder and other city officials have supported a call for more work-furlough centers as a way to reduce overcrowded jail conditions which have dogged the county for years.

Sheriff Brad Gates has estimated that it would take at least 3,000 additional jail beds--nearly double the number of existing units in the county’s entire jail system--to significantly reduce local crowding.