Plans for land use irk state

The state has sent Costa Mesa a strongly worded letter asking city officials to reconsider a plan to restrict future uses of the Orange County Fairgrounds solely for fair and noncommercial development purposes.

The Department of General Services, the state agency authorized to sell off the fairgrounds, sent Mayor Allan Mansoor and the City Council a letter Friday, expressing Sacramento’s alarm that a Specific Plan being ironed out by the city could scare off potential buyers of the 150-acre state-owned property in Costa Mesa.

“Adopting this Specific Plan will severely restrict the future land uses available to potential buyers,” Teresa Bierer, the department’s acting deputy director, wrote in the letter. “We are concerned that the fairgrounds’ commercial value will be negatively affected by preparing and adopting the Specific Plan. While we are, of course, sensitive to local matters, we also need to be sensitive to the economic consequences that could result from this action. We also need to carry out the Legislature’s direction to ‘obtain the highest, most certain’ return from the sale of the fairgrounds.

“...If the city moves forward with the Specific Plan and the fairgrounds’ value is diminished, the state will consider whatever options may be available to preserve the fairgrounds’ value,” Bierer’s letter continues.

Councilwoman Katrina Foley interpreted this last excerpt as “a threat of litigation from the state.”

“All I know is our City Council is unanimous in supporting the property remaining a fairground,” she said. “The politicians who were lobbying to sell the property are going to have to be accountable to the people.”

The state put the fairgrounds up for sale earlier this month after former state Sen. Dick Ackerman lobbied state lawmakers on behalf of the fairgrounds’ board of directors to have the property’s sale listed in the state’s budget.

The deadline for potential buyers to submit their bids is Jan. 8.

On Oct. 20, the City Council directed staff to develop a Specific Plan.

The plan is expected to be finished in early January, in time for the bidding deadline.

At the meeting, City Manager Allan Roeder said his staff was looking into the legality of putting the fairgrounds issue up for a referendum.

Mansoor reiterated his and the council’s request to look into the legal matter after receiving the letter Monday.

“I’m increasingly skeptical of what’s going on in general, and if there are no guarantees in place to keep the fairgrounds as it is, perhaps the best thing to do is take it off the market,” Mansoor said.

A legal opinion on whether restricting the fairgrounds’ use through a ballot initiative will be presented at the Nov. 3 council meeting, Roeder said.

“It’s disheartening, to say the very least, to get this letter at this point and suggest as though DGS have never heard that the city was insistent on keeping the grounds as a fair and exposition center,” he said.