Rezoning bluffs will aid Westside

Lolita Harper gets it right about the area of the Westside around

Victoria Street and Pacific Avenue being nice (Thinking Allowed, “How

the Westside has won -- my heart,” Monday). She’s also right about

the beautiful views from that area of our bluffs.

If Harper is interested in why some of us have been asking for the

bluffs from about 19th Street down to the Newport Beach border to be

rezoned residential, she might want to drive that area and contrast

it to the area around Victoria and Pacific that she did drive.

What she would find is that the beautiful bluffs suddenly change

into a lowest and worst use industrial area that looks like the City

of Industry. To many of us, this is obscene. Industrial buildings

belong on flat land that isn’t good for anything else. They do not

belong on view bluffs.

Why do we have industrial buildings on these bluffs whose views

are even better than the ones near Victoria and Pacific? Blame the

craven City Council for not changing things and for backing down to

the rude behavior of some of the industrialists (who mostly don’t

even live in Costa Mesa) who want to keep our bluffs mired in

industrial buildings so they can make enough money that they can

afford to live in Newport Beach.

Why did we ever have industrial buildings on our bluffs? It’s

nuts, and no urban planner in his right mind would ever put an

industrial area where there are such views. The answer is that once

upon a time, our bluffs had oil wells all over them. The only logical

thing to build next to such oil wells was industrial buildings.

Today, the oil wells have mostly gone away, but the buggy whip

industrial units remain. The owners of these buildings, who see them

as cash cows, scream any time the City Council or residents of Costa

Mesa want to allow the free market and highest and best land use

principles to bring in change.

Many of these industrial building owners are now saying the city

should leave them alone to do what they want on their land. These

owners have it backward. The city is presently protecting these

industrial uses by keeping improper industrial zoning and lowest and

worst use land regulations in place. Some of us are saying that we

would like to see proper 2003 zoning and land use regulations instead

of 1950 zoning and land use regulations. Times change. The demand

today is for housing. It’s time the bluffs changed.

Some of these industrial building owners are also using a red

herring in their arguments by saying that their buildings aren’t

blighted and they look nice. The problem with this argument is that

these buildings are still industrial buildings and not homes. They

are the wrong use for the bluffs, and no amount of paint will ever

fix that.

The City Council has to realize that this isn’t 1950. The oil

wells are gone. We should not have industrial units on our beautiful

bluffs. If these bluffs are changed to residential, the pent-up

demand for quality housing with views and ocean breezes will

transform the Westside without redevelopment and it’ll cause more

home building in Costa Mesa. This will free up other homes as move-up

buyers move to the bluffs. Then, maybe, Harper can even buy one of

these homes freed up by move up buyers.

If, on the other hand, these bluffs are allowed to remain

industrial, the Westside (speaking of the area around 19th and

Placentia to the Newport Beach border) will continue to fester and

rot. The industrial buildings are like a splinter in a sore. The sore

will never be healed until the splinter is pulled out.

Another advantage of building view homes on our bluffs is that

those who buy them will have enough disposable income so that quality

merchants will fight to move in along 19th and Placentia to serve

their needs.

Again, just to put a point on this, the simple act of rezoning the

bluffs may start an upward cycle that will transform the Westside.

MARTIN MILLARD

Costa Mesa