After four years of planning and public outreach, a vision for how the Fairview Developmental Center should be redeveloped into a mixed-used community is ready for a final decision.
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The Costa Mesa City Council is set to hold a hearing Tuesday, Sept. 15, on whether to adopt a land use plan that would guide development of 80 acres of the state-owned property into a new neighborhood with up to 4,000 homes for some 10,000 new residents.
Development of the Fairview site off Harbor Boulevard would help Costa Mesa meet its state-mandated housing target to zone for 11,760 new homes by the end of the decade. The city’s housing element estimates the property can accommodate at least 2,300 residential units, 40% of which would be affordable for low- to very-low-income families.
Given the high affordability requirement, the city’s planning staff said the project has to comprise at least 3,450 units to be “financially feasible” to potential builders. (Developers need market-rate apartments to subsidize state-mandated affordable units, they said.)
In a contentious meeting last month, Costa Mesa planning commissioners advanced a draft of the plan with 2,300 and 4,000 proposed units on the site, in addition to 35,000 square feet of commercial space and at least 14 acres of parks and other open space.
Some residents raised concerns about the impact of such a high-density development on traffic, public safety and property values in surrounding neighborhoods, as well as potential damage to a beloved golf course that neighbors the property. Others called the project a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to create affordable housing for residents, particularly essential workers, who have been pushed out of Costa Mesa.
“Many of our city staff can’t afford to live here themselves,” Commissioner Angely Andrade said at the August meeting. “So providing these affordable housing unit opportunities is huge.”
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The 110-acre Fairview Developmental Center opened in 1959 as a state-operated residential care facility for people with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
In 2022, seven years after the facility was shuttered, Costa Mesa received $3.5 million in state funding to develop land use scenarios and conduct public outreach for a project to reuse 80 acres of the property. The state is using 15 acres for a regional emergency operations center that broke ground last October.
Because the project is funded by the state using state-owned land, the city needs to comply with the state’s desire to prioritize “affordable housing to the greatest extent feasible,” officials said, including at least 200 units of permanent supportive housing, open space, and housing for individuals with developmental disabilities.
Once a final land use plan has been adopted, the state will select a developer to take on the project.
City officials have said it could take several more years for any construction to break ground, and more than a decade before development is complete.
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