Appendix - B Public Response B-1 NOP B-2 Comment Letters Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan Project Draft EIR
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B-1 NOP
City of Fountain Valley Planning & Building Department 10200 Slater Avenue Fountain Valley, CA 92708 DATE: October 9, 2015 Notice of Preparation/Notice of Scoping Meeting For A Draft Environmental Impact Report For The Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan Project TO: State Clearinghouse, Responsible Agencies, Trustee Agencies, Organizations and Interested Parties LEAD AGENCY: City of Fountain Valley 10200 Slater Avenue Fountain Valley, CA 92708 Contact: Matt Mogensen Planning and Building Director Phone: 714-593-4426 Email: Matt.Mogensen@fountainvalley.org The City of Fountain Valley intends to prepare an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the proposed Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan (Project). In accordance with Section 15082 of the State CEQA Guidelines, the City of Fountain Valley has prepared this Notice of Preparation to provide Responsible Agencies and other interested parties with information describing the proposed project and its potential environmental effects. The public is encouraged to visit the Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan website http://www.fountainvalley.org/341/fountain-valley-crossings-specific-plan to learn more about the project and view the outreach, reports, and information provided to date. Environmental factors that would be potentially affected by the proposed project are: Aesthetics Air Quality Greenhouse Gas Emissions Geology and Soils Hazards and Hazardous Materials Hydrology and Water Quality Land Use and Planning Noise Population and Housing Public Services Transportation and Traffic Utilities and Service Systems PROJECT LOCATION: The Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan area is located in the southeastern portion of the City of Fountain Valley (Figure 1). The Specific Plan area is bisected by Interstate 405 and would encompass approximately 155 acres bordered by Talbert Avenue to the north, Ellis Avenue to the south, Ward Street to the west, and the Santa Ana River to the east. PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The proposed Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan would guide future development within approximately 155 acres of light industrial/commercial uses in the southeastern portion of the City of Fountain Valley. The Specific Plan area is currently occupied by various light industrial (e.g., warehousing), retail, and office land uses and is the former Industrial Redevelopment Project Area. The Specific Plan would include a Land Use Element, Infrastructure Element, and Implementation, Financing, and Phasing Elements to help revitalize this light industrial area while respecting existing, thriving businesses. The Specific Plan would promote reinvestment with a mix of uses including residential, retail, and office land uses and
City of Fountain Valley Planning & Building Department 10200 Slater Avenue Fountain Valley, CA 92708 provide facilities and streetscapes that encourage community gathering. As envisioned, enhancement of this area will result in reinvestment to become a core area for civic, commercial, and neighborhood activities for the City. The Specific Plan would guide this future reuse of the existing industrial business park land uses, addressing the type, location, intensity, and design of mixed-use buildings, as well as transportation and public infrastructure improvements. The City intends to work with the community, property and business owners to tailor the Specific Plan to accommodate projected growth in a manner which fosters development of a vibrant and desirable mixed-use area. The components of the Crossings Specific Plan would include the following elements and features: Land Use Element The Land Use Element would include form-based codes to provide greater predictability and flexibility for potential developers, the community, and the City. A form-based code would be drafted to implement the Specific Plan to ensure the vision identified by the community, property and business owners is achieved. Allowable uses, densities, and identification of incompatible uses will also be included. Lastly, the Land Use Element will allow for the vibrant activity center that is desired by the community which will help attract the community to the re-developed area. Infrastructure Element The Infrastructure Element would include: A Transportation/Circulation Plan that will identify all transportation improvements inside and outside the Specific Plan Area needed to accommodate new development. A Roadway Plan that will provide alignments for all interior, neighborhood, collector, and arterial type roads within the Specific Plan Area. A Pedestrian and Bicycle Network Plan to link new residential uses in the Specific Plan Area to parks, schools, community facilities, and other nearby community amenities. Transportation/circulation diagrams and maps. A Streetscape/Landscape Plan that will be integrated with the roadway network and pedestrian/bicycle network plans described above. A Community Facilities Plan that will define the size and location of parks/community facilities within the Specific Plan Area. This plan will also provide analysis and estimates of the costs to construct and maintain community facilities within the Specific Plan Area. Required additional public utility and service improvements. Implementation, Financing, and Phasing Element The Implementation, Financing, and Phasing Element will include the Capital Improvement Program projects with estimates of projects in the infrastructure element. A programmatic Funding and Financing Program will also be included for the identified projects. Lastly, this Element will include a Phasing Program that will link the land use development with capital improvements in both table and map diagram formats. Public Outreach and Meetings The Crossings Specific Plan project was initiated in summer 2014 and has included 3 public community workshops and one special joint City Council and Planning Commission Study Session. Significant components of the draft Crossings Specific Plan were developed through the planning and public outreach process. The EIR to be prepared will analyze the project related and cumulative environmental impacts of the proposed project.
City of Fountain Valley Planning & Building Department 10200 Slater Avenue Fountain Valley, CA 92708 REVIEW PERIOD: As specified by the State CEQA Guidelines, the Notice of Preparation will be circulated for a minimum 30-day review period. The City of Fountain Valley welcomes agency and public input during this period regarding the scope and content of environmental information related to your agency s responsibility that must be included in the Draft EIR. Comments may be submitted, in writing, by 5:00 p.m. on November 16, 2015 and addressed to: Matt Mogensen City of Fountain Valley Planning and Building Department 10200 Slater Avenue Fountain Valley, CA 92708 E-mail: matt.mogensen@fountainvalley.org SCOPING MEETING: The City has scheduled a Public Scoping Meeting for the EIR to describe the proposed project, the environmental review process, and to receive your verbal input on the information that should be included in the EIR. The Public Scoping Meeting is scheduled at the following time and location: OCTOBER 28, 2015 6:00 PM FOUNTAIN VALLEY CITY HALL 10200 SLATER AVENUE FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CA 92708
Mile Square Golf Course WARNER AVENUE Mile Square Regional Park 105 405 91 5 605 605 405 PROJECT SITE Huntington Beach 57 Fullerton Anaheim 55 Orange Newport Beach LOS ANGELES COUNTY 55 Irvine 60 SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY 22 Santa Ana ORANGE Fountain Valley COUNTY Mission Viejo 15 91 RIVERSIDE COUNTY CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST Laguna Beach 5 N MILES 0 10 San Clemente San Juan Capistrano SAN DIEGO COUNTY SLATER AVENUE WARD STREET EUCLID STREET C A N MILES L I 0 300 F O R N I Orange County A Project Site 405 TALBERT AVENUE MACARTHUR BOULEVARD Hyunda Motor America Facility Fountain Valley Channel SAN TA ANA RIVER HYLAND AVENUE ELLIS AVENUE LEGEND Crossings Specific Plan Area Santa Ana River Trail City Boundary CITY OF FOUNTAIN VALLEY BOUNDARY Greenville Banning Channel 405 N SCALE IN Feet 0 1,200 Project Vicinity FIGURE Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan 1
B-2 Comment Letters
From: Don West [mailto:dwest@houseofbatteries.com] Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 3:47 PM To: Matt Mogensen Subject: Scoping Project Hi Matt, My wife and I attended your meeting last night on the Scoping project and we have the following concerns, we own the building at 10910 Talbert Ave. that is within your project area; 1. Traffic on Talbert, especially in the morning is terrible. If you re plan is to put in apartments and an entertainment center it will just get a lot worst. Why doesn t the city change the lights at Talbert & Euclid to move more traffic through this intersection? 2. If the city of Fountain Valley feels they need a central entertainment center like Metro Point or Bella Terra then I think your wrong. I believe that the city feels they re missing out and wants a center next to the freeway so you get exposure and more people into the city. So once you rezone this area the city will do Immediate Domain to take our building so you can build this entertainment center. 3. If that is what your plan is, you will have a major fight on your hands that will be held up in court for many years. The news media will be involved as well as rallying every citizen in Fountain Valley to fight this plan. These companies have been in the city for many years and provides good jobs to many people. 4. If the city wants a entertainment center, why don t you use the vacant land on the corner or Euclid & Talbert. I think I know the reason, you want to be next to the freeway. You should have use the land that Hyundai has before you allowed them to build their new building. 5. Many theaters are going out of business due to people can now do streaming video and are not going to the movies like they used to. I believe this project will be a failure if it were to go through. 6. This is a nice city to live and work in, don t screw it up. If we want to go to an entertainment center, we have more than enough places to go without adding to the congestion we already have in Fountain Valley. 7. We looked for a suitable building for a couple of years before we decided to buy this one that fit our needs, and if you think we will just be pushed out so you can build this center, it s going to be a battle. Finding another building would be very costly and difficult and you should care more about who has help build this city and not shove your plan down our throats. That s my 2 cents, let s see where we go now. Regards, Don West President
House of Batteries 800-432-3385 x116 www.houseofbatteries.com
Ayala, Holly From: Sent: To: Subject: Matt Mogensen <Matt.Mogensen@fountainvalley.org> Friday, November 06, 2015 4:08 PM Ayala, Holly FW: Fountain Valley Crossing Specific Plan EIR HI Holly, Can you please include the comments/questions below in the ones you have already? Thanks. Have a good weekend. Matt Mogensen Planning and Building Director City of Fountain Valley 714-593-4426 www.fountainvalley.org From: Augdee@aol.com [mailto:augdee@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 3:23 PM To: Matt Mogensen Subject: Fountain Valley Crossing Specific Plan EIR Mr. Matt Mogensen, City of Fountain Valley Planning and Building Department Fountain Valley City Hall 10200 Slater Avenue, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 Hello Matt, I am Augie Lascola and I live at 16705 Cedar Circle here in Fountain Valley. From the Subject of this e-mail, you can see that I am responding to you with some concerns I have and a few questions to ask you relative to the Crossings Specific Plan EIR which I hear is to be reviewed on 11/16/15. First my concerns: You should know that I have attended a couple of the Crossing Specific Plan meetings at he City Hall. One of my big concerns is that to this time, I have not heard of how many or what percentage of the occupying businesses have affirmed that they wish to participate with the Crossings Specific Plan project? I would think that this would be very important for the City to know as if a small percentage participation, the project would appear to be a failure, we get a lot of proposed zoning changes with no takers. I ask you what if a now profitable occupying business wanted to participate in the project and was interested in developing a up scale restaurant, would you think this already profitable business would 1
spend the minimum amount of say over $2 mil. to construct and fit out the restaurant? Would you think they would do this? Many of us Fountain Valley Citizens were looking forward to a fun place, a City Center that most of us wanted. Instead, it appears that at best, we may get up to, 500 residential housing units many of which could be High Density housing units of up to 4 stories and a lot of proposed zoning changes. One other concern I have is from seeing a picture on Facebook it appears that the Proposed Clear Channel Digital Sign is to be located right in the Crossings Plan's project land area near the water tank and it appears to me that the sign could negativity Impact the future of the Crossings Specific Plan Project. It will light it up like a Christmas tree. Now my questions: What about the traffic in the Crossings area of Newhope, Euclid, Talbert, Ward, and Ellis? It is already bad and could get worst if the Crossings Specific Plan Project comes to be real. We all need answers not just that the City is aware of the traffic problems and is working on it's resolutions. We need more than this. We need specifics to what is being proposed to be done and when it will be resolved. How will the sewer treatment plant smell (or stench) be dealt with? How will this impact the Crossings Plan development plans? What about the existing businesses that wish to remain as they are and not participate? Will we end up with lots of proposed zoning changes with no takers after paying the Crossings Specific Plan project consultant their fee? Looking forward to your attention to my concerns and my questions. Thank you, Augie Lascola 16705 Cedar Circle Fountain Valley, CA. 92708 2
The City of Fountain Valley welcomes agency and public input during this period regarding the scope and content of environment information related to your agency s responsibility that must include in the Draft EIR. [from Notice of Preparation/Notice of Scoping Meeting for a Draft Environment Impact Report For The Fountain Valley Crossing Specific Plan Project, City of Fountain Valley dated: Oct 9, 2-015 ] Subject: Input & Comments in Response to Notice of Preparation for a Draft Environment Impact Crossing Specific Plan Project, City of Fountain Valley To: Mat Mogensen City of Fountain Valley Planning and Building Department From: Eugene M. Murray 10164 Falcon Ave Fountain Valley, CA 92708 Date: 15 November 2015 References: Input & Comments by Eugene M. Murray 11/15/2015
Inputs & Comments with References 1. After reviewing literal 100's pages of questions relating to high-rise, high-density development - I see that the only reasonable next step is to ask for a continuance of this review process by the City of Fountain Valley. Why? So that those of us that have to work for a living or already have regular weekly time commitments that restrict the practical review time available for working citizens. The city's last meeting on these new and change zoning changes failed totally to provide a coherent framework of what the city's strategic planning effort was working towards. Coherence is the big picture perspective versus cohesion that fill in the detail; i.e., in a small case view, coherence is seen at the paragraph level while sentence and their structure provide the cohesive details. 2. The use of (SCAG) Southern CA Association of Government role of providing input in our cities planning process and whether or not does SCAG have any true authority in the process of formulation our city planning or are they simply a providing suggested solutions and it is up to the city whether or not we have any real legal reason to follow their suggestions. Please explain any legal reason that any suggestions or the use of SCAG products has in our city s planning process? 3. Please explain the right & the responsibility of Fountain Valley city council to encourage our residents to live in a mixed land use environment. 4. Since this seems to be the first one proposed in Fountain Valley, please it should be explained what the overall impact of high-density, mixed creation would benefit/cost for the city? Remember, the city has never done an development project of this type and thus it has little notion of the long range impact on our current community lifestyle of single family housing environment that we have built up over the last 50 years. 5. Here is one question being asked by the City; Reference [2] page 5 of 62. Under "Project Description" it states"...to help revitalize light industrial area while respecting the existing thriving businesses" - Since the purpose of the proposed project bears highly on the potential impact to the environment, the phrase "to help revitalize" should be based on factual evidence "Help" implies something is in need of assistance and "revitalize" infers that the subject is not vital. Given the current very high occupancy and low turnover in the project area as report by the City's consultant firm FTS, this phrase "to help revitalize" does not apply! If the City wishes to assert some other conditions [ ie, sociological, emotional, economic, political, etc.] it should do so transparently and accurately and it should provide supporting details. If not the phrase should be eliminated from Reference [2]. Such a high-density project would definitely change our sociological, emotional, economic, political, etc community environment - in particular - dramatically increase traffic flow over the Santa Ana river Talbert-MacArthur bridge and the Talbert-Euclid intersection. Please explain what is the benefit/cost of the impact on our community culture as a single family unit environment. Would this increase or decrease our single family home investment in the long-term (10-20 years) and who much (on percentage timeline for example). Input & Comments by Eugene M. Murray 11/15/2015
6. Would these new mixed land usage standard carry over into requiring all structures to make improvements or retrofits? Would these new codes legal bind us to make a drastic different standard than the standards we have been using over the recent past? 7. Would SCAG requirement make a binding agreement to comply with all of SCAG regulations or requirements? 8. Today there is no compelling reason to do this high risk, first time project like a high-density development. Please explain what make it compelling to implement these mixed land usage code in the next year? It was asked if there we any revenue issue that demand increase the City s revenues and the answer was not specific but the notion was clear that revenues are not an issue. If so, again what other facts where not presented that would explain why this coding change needs to done in the next 2years?, 5years? Input & Comments by Eugene M. Murray 11/15/2015
From: tom gergen [mailto:gergent@earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 4:55 PM To: Matt Mogensen Subject: Response to Notice of Preparation for a Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Fountain Valley Crossings Specific Plan Project Question #1 Question #2 Is there any "Standard of Care" or professional standard recognized in the industry on an impartial relationship between the entity writing the EIR, and the city and Urban Design firm relaying on the EIR report? Are there directives or guidance in any City of Fountain Valley statute, code, rule, standard of conduct, business practice, etc. which relates to the relationship between the entity developing/writing/delivering project related EIR documents and the City? If so, what are they? What do they require of the City and/or its employee and contractors? Thank you for your attention to these questions, Tom Gergen 18659 Los Leones Street Fountain Valley, CA 92708