Council vote to affect condo conversion projects

A project to renovate 12 Victoria Street apartments and sell them individually will face a final hurdle tonight, when the Costa Mesa City Council decides whether to allow it.

But it may also be a bit of a bellwether indicating how such condo conversion projects will fare in the future. Since April, the city has had a moratorium on subdividing apartment buildings for individual sale of units. In the meantime, the city has been drafting stricter rules for condo conversions that the council will consider next month.

Developer Barry Saywitz owns the apartments at 577 and 579 Victoria St. He said he appealed to the council because he’s puzzled by the city planning commission’s recommendation in April that he upgrade nine of the 12 units for sale but knock down the other three.

“To force me to eliminate 25% of the units and ensure there’s no financial gain to the project, why would you all of a sudden take that approach?” he said. One of the goals of proposed new condo rules is to address problems with a lack of parking and open space. Under the new rules, owners of older buildings who want to sell the units would have to meet today’s standards for new buildings.

Saywitz’s Victoria Street project doesn’t have as much parking as would be required today, but he doesn’t have to meet the new standards, because the council hasn’t approved them.

Planning commissioner Sam Clark said the parking and density still were a concern, and eliminating three of the units would address that. He agreed that it’s unusual to require some of the units to be torn down for a condo conversion.

But Saywitz and commission chairman Donn Hall, who voted against the majority, said they think there was a hope that the developer would opt to tear down the whole complex and build something new. The parcel is within the special zoning district created to encourage redevelopment on the Westside.

If Saywitz razed the apartments to redevelop, Hall said, “It’s going to take you 30 years before you can recover penny one. If he had to do that he’s just going to continue to rent the old units.”

It’s unclear whether the council will let Saywitz keep all 12 units and sell them, or require some to be razed. But overall, the city seems to be moving away from giving older buildings today’s seal of approval.

The proposed new standards for condo conversions would sunset at the end of 2011, meaning the ability to change an older building from rental to ownership units will go away, unless a future council votes to extend it.

In the short term, that would encourage owners to apply for conversion in the next four years, Clark said.

“In another five, 10 years, the landscape in Costa Mesa in housing and land use will be completely changed, and that ordinance was drafted for today,” he said.

Also under the proposed new rules, some industrial developments on the Westside couldn’t be sold as individual units.

Hall said some industrial developments could be done in a way that upgrades the area, but “there’s others that are just sort of, bluntly, junk. If you convert them, they’re going to continue to be junk forever.”

ALICIA ROBINSON may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or at [email protected].