After last week’s emotional affair, this week’s relatively prosaic agenda comes as something of a relief. However, with the City Council looking at two Planning Commission decisions, a budget review and committee and Planning Commission appointments all on deck, it still looks like the City Council and Staff are in for a very long night.

Raising Canes not in the clear yet – Council Member Arlis Reynolds calls for a review the Planning Commission’s approval

The first Planning Commission decision to be reconsidered is its approval of a Raising Canes restaurant and drive-thru on Newport Boulevard, in place of the old Von Hemert’s Furniture Store. Council Member Arlis Reynolds requested the review (the proposed restaurant is within Council Member Reynolds’s district). In the review application, Council Member Reynolds cites a need for a “higher level of review of traffic, circulation and noise and neighborhood impacts” and an “adequate opportunity for awareness and input by adjacent businesses and residents.”

While the grounds for review are obviously vague, the first part of the review criteria makes me wonder if Council Member Reynolds will scrutinize the double-loaded drive-thru that makes up a big part of the Raise Canes proposal.

While I didn’t dwell on the drive thru when I wrote about this development at the Planning Commission level, I almost did. And that’s because it probably is time for Costa Mesa to break up with the drive-thru. On the surface, drive-thrus seem, at worst, an innocuous land use similar to any other commercial use, or at best, an incredible convenience to working people who often have to spend long commutes in a car and rarely have the time or energy to cook a hot meal. But look a little deeper and the case for the drive-thru becomes pretty weak, especially from the perspective of the city.

To anyone familiar with the issues caused by popular fast food drive-thru chains like Chik-fil-A and In-n-Out, none of the drawbacks of drive-thrus will come as a surprise. First, drive-thrus can cause traffic backups and blocked driveways if queuing cars spill out onto the street. Second, the wide drive aisles and idling cars make the streetscape around drive-thrus bleak and polluted, which in turn undermine the area’s walkability and overall attractiveness. And third, a drive-thru’s heavy reliance on curb cuts and driveways can create dangerous conflict points between bicyclists and pedestrians on the street and exiting/entering cars.

So while the drive-thru once seemed like the epitome of restaurant technology, it is not surprising that some cities have placed moratoriums on approving new drive-thrus. Is that the motivation behind Council Member Reynolds’ call for review? It hard to say; the residents of the nearby Sea Breeze mobile homes raised reasonable concerns about traffic and noise, and I wonder if an individual applicant’s project is the right forum to raise a new rule of general applicability. But if the review was going to happen anyway, I welcome the opportunity for the city to have a discussion about whether drive-thrus continue to be good uses of our valuable downtown land.

The former Trinity Broadcasting Network site gets appealed by a resident neighbor

In another appeal from the Planning Commission, this time by a resident, the plans for the former Trinity Broadcasting Network site to be turned into an event space appear to have hit a snag. The appelant-resident has attached to its appeal documentation going back to 1996 that purports to show a long, tortured history of complaints from nearby residents against the property for noise and other disturbances.

Without getting into the merits of these claims, this is clearly going to be a long, long discussion. Admittedly I was pretty wrapped up in the IHO discussion when this project went before the Planning Commission in February, so I didn’t dwell on it. But the site does have an interesting history. In addition to being the gaudy headquarters of the now-defunct Trinity Broadcasting Network, the parcel was also quietly inserted into the Measure K sites that were exempted from Measure Y in a razor-thin vote in 2022. This came after the site had just changed hands in 2021, which makes one wonder if the lobbying to get easier zoning applied to the site came with redevelopment for housing in mind. However, the owners’ plans have clearly changed and they’ve now pivoted to an event center.

I wonder what the owners would do with the site if the City Council were to deny the current application. Would they go back to Plan A, which seems to envision redevelopment and multifamily housing?

The City Budget discussion will (hopefully) get back on track for 2024

To her credit, Finance Director Carol Molina runs a tight ship when it comes to budget season. So I’m guessing the City Council’s decision to push back the budget review and her finely tuned schedule was somewhat disappointing. Thankfully there shouldn’t be anything in the results themselves that will garner a lot of discussion, as the city seems like it is doing pretty well.

But I do expect this to be a somewhat contentious item, as it represents a continuation of the argument the Mayor and the City Manager got into a few weeks ago over staffing judgments. That clash looks to have shaken loose a structure chart of the Planning Department, which wasn’t provided during the prior study session when the City Manager proposed some new salaried positions. Interestingly, the structure chart appears to contemplate a complete overhaul of the reporting hierarchy within the Economic and Development Services Department to create effectively two sub-departments, one dealing with current planning (such as development assistance and entitlements) and one dealing with “advance planning”, which presumably would cover citywide rezonings and big projects like Fairview Development Center.

I’m not sufficiently savvy in local government structure to have an opinion on whether this restructuring is a good idea or not. But I would note that, without Mayor John Stephens asking pointed (and possibly over-stepping) questions about what City Manager Lori Ann Farrell Harrison was thinking regarding the proposed positions, I wonder if we would have gotten public disclosure of the reorganization plan at all. Clearly from the prior exchange, City Manager Farrell Harrison views staffing and structuring as entirely within her office. And if the City Council isn’t invited to participate in that, it stands to reason there would be no need to inform the public, either.

Finally, the Planning Commission and the Committees will get new members (if the City Council is still awake)

To round out the evening, the City Council is also slated to make appointments to its many resident committees as well as fill a vacancy on the Planning Commission. (Now former) Planning Commissioner Jimmy Vivar announced his official resignation last week, citing personal issues (he just got married) and an impending move to Anaheim as the reason behind his stepping back from public service. Mr. Vivar got some well deserved plaudits from the Planning Commission and staff at the last meeting and I expect the same will happen at the City Council. In his place, Council Member Reynolds is slated to make the nomination, and I expect she will try to pick someone from her own district.

While there are plenty of architects to pick from and even Council Member Reynolds’s former City Council challenger Rob Dickson threw his hat into the ring, I have my eye on David Martinez or Andrew Barnes for the Planning Commission seat. Both Mr. Martinez and Mr. Barnes have served long stints on the city’s Active Transportation Committee, a resident group near and dear to Council Member Reynolds’s heart, and both have shown themselves to be thoughtful advocates for a better Costa Mesa.

Finally, Don Harper remains on the masthead — when will he resign?

My “Harper Watch” continues as his vacancy is likely to trigger an intriguing game of musical chairs in the Costa Mesa political scene. But for now, he appears to be hanging onto his seat.