Costa Mesa’s long, long, long, long, LONG twilight struggle to get its Housing Element in order with the State of California may be nearing the end. Although life has certainly gotten in the way, I hesitated previewing the City Council’s meeting earlier this month simply because, although the agenda contained two meaty looking housing items, I sensed that the debate on those items would be minimal. The California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has sued the city for chronic tardiness. To this point, city staff has done everything in its power to craft a plausible path to resolving that lawsuit with minimal financial bloodshed.

And, to no close observer’s surprise, the City Council unanimously took the hint and voted 7-0 to add dense residential zoning to most of the city’s commercial corridors, potentially impacting the look and feel of these areas for decades to come. Yes, there was a fair amount of commentary from the dais — some of it quite heartfelt and interesting — about the challenges of developing affordable housing and the deep power imbalance between state and local governments. But that didn’t change anyone’s vote.

So, is that the end? The city will now submit the revised Housing Element to HCD, show that it’s rezoned its land in conformance with the State’s requirements, and put this whole ugly situation behind it, right?

Nope.

Because there was newsy bit of information that was disclosed at that September 1 meeting, which is that HCD had sent the city yet another comment letter on the Housing Element revisions city staff had previewed with state officials over the summer. And in that letter, HCD gave the city a devastating update on its quest for certification:

So now, and I think only now, HCD is formally requiring completing the rezoning of the Fairview Developmental Center in order to obtain Housing Element certification.

I say this is “devastating” news because, up until this point, city staff appears to have been operating on the assumption that the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan process was on a separate track from Housing Element certification. Yes, the FDC property was a significant part of the Housing Element’s approach to achieving its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). Yes, it accounted for 2,300 of the 11,760 units Costa Mesa had to zone for, and yes, the city had planned to allocate a disproportional number of affordable and deeply affordable units to the site.

But earlier this year, city staff was assuring the Planning Commission that Housing Element certification could be achieved without finishing the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan. Consider this exchange from the January 26, 2026 Planning Commission meeting reviewing the initial set of Housing Element opportunity sites, before the Segerstroms and other property owners decided to up-end the Housing Element process by removing their properties from consideration as housing sites:

Planning Commissioner David Martinez: And then the follow on to that is uh the Fairview Developmental Center which if if we if we don’t have that done we miss our targets for very low income, low-income and moderate income in RHNA. So do we not need to have the FDC specific plan done in order to get HCD certified or do we need the FDC specific plan done in order to get HCD certification?

Costa Mesa Advanced Planning Manager Anna McGill: The FDC site has its own state legislation associated with it. So, we’re proceeding along the timelines that are outlined there, which is the, um, so we’re if the city council when we bring it to them hopefully in March adopts this, we will submit for certification at that point without the FDC site being complete.

Costa Mesa Planning Commission Regular Meeting, January 26, 2026 (emphasis mine)

So why does this matter? Because the City Council is now set to give its final approval of the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan this evening. And, if the pressure of adjudicating the city’s largest land use decision in many decades wasn’t enough, it can now add the additional pressure of another powerful State agency breathing down its neck while it does it.

So, what should we expect from this evening?

Last month I wondered whether the City Council’s hands were really tied at Fairview Developmental Center, and I think it is still an open question as to how much wiggle room it has today. As implied by my post, I too was operating under the assumption that the FDC Specific Plan was operating on a separate timeline from the city’s Housing Element compliance process, which gave me the impression that the city might have more time to work on this plan.

And more time is probably what is needed at this moment. I attended the town hall on the FDC Specific Plan hosted by Mayor John Stephens last week. The overwhelming sentiment in the room was that people were unsatisfied with many aspects of the plan, with the heavy unit count and the impacts on traffic and the Mesa Linda Golf Course foremost among them. I did not get a sense from Mayor Stephens that he was trying to tell the current FDC Specific Plan as a fait accompli or trying to get out in front of a difficult but necessary decision. Rather, he ran the meeting in a fairly reserved and open-minded way. I may be reading too much between the lines, but I definitely got the sense that he (and maybe the other City Council members who attended) were searching for other options.

But again, HCD’s August 21st letter casts serious doubt on whether the city has enough time to find those options. Every day the city’s Housing Element remains out of compliance, the city becomes exposed to greater and greater penalties from the State’s enforcement lawsuit. It also remains subject to the Builder’s Remedy and other limitations on the city’s ability to exert local control over land use. And it remains ineligible to receive certain state-level grants for its various initiatives, a limitation that nearly scuttled the affordable housing development planned at the Costa Mesa Senior Center and has hamstrung the city’s ability to fund its homeless shelter.

So the first thing to watch for will be whether the City Council will push city staff to nevertheless find a way to proceed with certification of the Housing Element without finishing the FDC Specific Plan, and thus buy themselves more time to deliberate.

Is that possible? In theory, I think so: HCD’s August 21st letter seemed solely preoccupied by the city’s rezoning process. Perhaps — and really I’m speculating, because only city staff and HCD personnel really know — Costa Mesa could adopt placeholder zoning over the site while it continues work on the FDC Specific Plan. I have absolutely no idea if HCD would accept this compromise.

But I think it has to try. With something as large and dangerous as the Housing Element hanging over the FDC planning process, it is completely impossible to “plan” for anything other than paper compliance at FDC. So the city needs to start eliminating these pressures as fast as possible. As Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill colorfully put it in the absolute masterpiece of a movie The Darkest Hour, you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth:

So I would think the first step for the city would be: remove your head from the mouth of the tiger. If the city can put the matter with HCD to rest, then it can focus on what really matters at FDC. In my humble opinion, the FDC process has been crippled by the city trying to please too many masters at the same time. If we can start picking off (and thus limiting the input of) state agencies that have made doing good planning at FDC so difficult, the city’s remaining work will be much easier.

But what *is* the city’s remaining work?

ASSUMING City Council can find a way to extend its deadlines and do better planning at FDC, that still leaves them with the issue of determining what to do with that extra time.

The first idea, which has been championed since the beginning by super-resident Cynthia McDonald and seemed to somewhat popular at the Mayor’s town hall, is to have the City Council form a special committee to review the FDC Specific Plan and make recommendations based on the various mandates on the site as well as the public input received to date.

While I love committees — I’ve sat on two city committees and I’ve written in defense of their powers on multiple occasions — I’m struggling to see the wisdom of doing forming a new one at this point in the process. Perhaps a committee would have done significant good if, as Ms. McDonald has suggested, it had been formed at the very beginning of this process.

But now, with all of the outreach done and the planning dollars significantly spent, it isn’t clear that a committee, even one staffed with experts and city officials, would be empowered to reach conclusions different from those that have been repeatedly emphasized by city staff.

Instead, I think the city may be better served using the time to allow city staff to revise the FDC Specific Plan to meet clear criteria as set by the City Council itself. Doing so may require holding a special meeting (or two) that would allow members to openly and publicly collaborate, possibly in ways not seen outside of the biennial meetings to set the City Council goals and priorities. And yes, these meetings would come at *absolutely the worst time* for two sitting City Council members, Loren Gameros and Michael Buley, each of which are trying to win the Mayor’s seat in November. But, at least the burden would fall on each of them equally.

I do think the extra effort would be worth it. The problem with the FDC Specific Plan has been, from the beginning, that the City Council has not given either staff or its advisory bodies (particularly the Planning Commission) clear directives about what it wanted to achieve with — or even what it wanted to protect from — redevelopment at the FDC site. And in the absence of that clear direction, Staff has gamely tried to advance the ball using compliance with State laws and vague City Council priorities as its only guideposts.

I mean, look at what possibly the most important Agenda Report in the last 20 years ends with:

This weightless coda to such a hefty ordeal doesn’t seem fitting.

In all likelihood, the FDC Specific Plan that has been torturing the city (and particularly city staff) for years will pass as written, perhaps with a maximum of 3,500 units, or perhaps with a different number. But, as a lover of chaos, I certainly hope the City Council finds another way. That would be far more entertaining and, more importantly — better for the residents, present and future, that will live in the city for decades to come.