I was catching up on City Council this week and, as I watched the debate rage over whether One Metro West would wiggle out of the Measure Y vote requirement (spoiler alert: it did), I found myself once again musing about public engagement. Which reminded me: wasn’t there something big we were doing five minutes ago that, supposedly, required a lot of public outreach?

What was it again?

Oh yeah: we were planning for over a hundred acres of development in the middle of the city at Fairview Developmental Center (FDC).

Last time we heard about the FDC project was at a Planning Commission meeting back in March, which the city was notably pushing everyone to attend. At that meeting, the city’s consultant, PlaceWorks, gamely recounted all of the outreach that had been done thus far. It then announced the new timeline for the project: Three land use scenarios were being prepared and would be presented to the public via workshops in May/June 2024. It is now June 7, 2024, and I haven’t seen hide or hair of any such “workshops”.

So… where are the plans?

Ever since this project started, something’s felt off about it. Why would the State give the city of Costa Mesa free rein over 100+ acres of extremely valuable, State-owned land? It didn’t make sense. But then the shoes started dropping: well, actually, 20 acres of the project site known as “Shannon’s Mountain” is actually already earmarked for housing for the developmentally disabled. Oh, and by the way, the State is going to carve out another 15 or so acres to site an emergency operations center. It’s probably also useful to know that the existing structures are outdated and full of asbestos, so we don’t expect we can reuse hardly anything onsite. And now, tucked into the FAQs on the FDC development plan website such that I didn’t notice it until today, is a reference to SB 138, which is a bill passed in Fall 2023 that “authorizes the State Department of Developmental Services to construct up to three complex needs homes (5 persons per home, 15 people max) that would require 24/7 staffing”, presumably on the FDC site. So that’s another handful of acres now dedicated to State-funded public housing.

Is it possible the State has some other ask in the works that is causing PlaceWorks to put a pause on the development of land use scenarios? I know that the State budget crisis has to be upsetting all kinds of apple carts. Would it affect the plan at FDC? Maybe not; as of January 2024, the 2024-2025 California State Department of Developmental Services budget highlighted that it has set aside over $11 million for the “warm shutdown” of Fairview Developmental Center, whatever that means. That seems like a pretty large amount of money when the State seems like (from the outsider’s perspective) to be doing very little except waiting for the city’s specific plan process to play out.

But whatever the deal is, we’re late getting an update on the FDC. If we hear nothing by the end of the month, I think it will be time to ask whether something is up.

UDPATE: Based on the June 11 Study Session materials posted today on the update to the City’s Strategic Plan, it looks like City Council and Planning Commission are scheduled to get an FDC update “after community outreach” in July. Which, presumably, means that such outreach will occur prior to July. Tick tock.