Notice regarding Communication Linkage Forum (ComLink)
General Meeting – Thursday, January 26, 2017
Community Room @ Santa Ana Police Station, at 60 Civic Center Plaza, in Santa Ana
State Senator Janet Nguyen will be at tonight’s ComLink meeting to discuss new changes to the State’s land use and zoning laws regarding Accessory Dwelling Units (aka Granny Flats). Continue reading
LATERRA DEVELOPMENT BREAKS GROUND ON TWO INFILL APARTMENT PROJECTS IN SANTA ANA AND CHULA VISTA
LOS ANGELES – LaTerra Development, a Los Angeles based real estate developer, has started construction on two infill apartment projects totaling 325 units in Santa Ana and Chula Vista. Each project was capitalized with institutional joint venture equity and construction financing.
LaTerra started construction this week at The Line at Santa Ana, a 3.9-acre, TOD mixed-use development containing 228 apartment units and 4,000 square feet of ground floor retail, located at 3630 W. Westminster Avenue in Santa Ana, the county seat of Orange County. “The Line is in a prime location at Harbor Boulevard and the 22 Freeway in the award winning Garden Grove school district and is directly adjacent to a future light rail line stop,” explained Charles Tourtellotte, President and CEO of LaTerra. Continue reading
Did you know that the Santa Ana City Council, like the City Councils in Anaheim and in Garden Grove, has committed to giving thousands of taxpayer dollars to luxury hotel developers as an incentive for them to build four or five star hotels here in Santa Ana
The Santa Ana City Council approved this scheme unanimously this Tuesday night. The proposal offers “high-rated hotel developer 50 percent of the new incremental hotel visitors’ tax the property generates, for up to 15 years.”
Santa Ana currently imposes an 11 percent hotel visitors’ tax on hotel and motel guests, which is projected to yield $9 million by the end of fiscal year 2015-16. Continue reading
The Santa Ana City Council has decided to rezone an 18-acre parcel of industrial land for what would be the city’s largest mixed-use development to help solve housing needs in the densely populated community, according to the O.C. Register.
The site, called The Heritage, is at 2001 E. Dyer Road, just East of Redhill Ave. The project will include 1,221 market-rate apartment units, 12,675 square feet of retail commercial space and 5,415 square feet of restaurant space. Continue reading
There is an effort underway by Rock Solid Recovery to convert the Mauna Loa Garden Apartments in Santa Ana to a 60 unit residential development to a behavioral health facility – essentially a drug rehab center, at 1311 Washington Place, in Santa Ana, just south of the Target store located at N. Grand Ave. and 17th. St.
This proposed drug rehab center will be located a half mile south of Sierra Intermediate School and the adjacent Northeast Santa Ana Little League.
This seems like a bad idea. For one thing the proposed location in our city is ringed by crime. But to see how bad an idea this is check out these Yelp excerpts regarding Rock Solid Recovery, which currently offers rehab facilities in Costa Mesa: Continue reading
The Santa Ana City Council on Tuesday unanimously directed staff to update the city’s Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance, which only allows modest-sized granny flats – between 300 square feet and 750 square feet or 30 percent of the size of the primary dwelling on the parcel, whichever is less, according to the O.C. Register.
What this means is that zoning regulations will be revised and residents may be allowed to build much larger add-ons that might include amenities like bathrooms and kitchens.
But is this a good idea? Dramatically increasing housing density at a time that crie is out of control doesn’t make much sense to us. Continue reading
Mike Harrah
Can you believe it? The O.C. Register is filing for bankruptcy again – after losing a huge court case and having to pay past due invoices to the tune of over $600K to a printer, according to the OC Weekly.
But there is far more to this story – developer Mike Harrah, who has been scrambling to find tenants for his proposed One Broadway Plaza office tower, is joining Rich Mirman, the CEO and Publisher of the O.C. Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise in a bid to by the company’s assets. Here are a few excerpts from the Freedom Communications press release about Mirman and Harrah’s gambit: Continue reading
City of Santa Ana
Community Alert: City of Santa Ana to Host Economic Development Strategic Plan Forums
The City of Santa Ana will be hosting three community forums in November to garner feedback on a new Economic Development Strategic Plan. Local residents and businesses are invited to share their thoughts on the City’s plan for economic development and to learn about how economic development affects jobs, public safety, roads, business growth, educational opportunities and shopping choices.
The firm helping to create the Economic Development Plan, RSG, will be presenting data gathered on different metrics such as employment, education, real estate lease/sales rates, property turnover and business performance during the forums. RSG will field questions, ask questions and invite feedback. Additionally, there will be interactive stations at the events for input, and a survey that can be taken onsite or online. Continue reading
City of Santa Ana
Community Alert: City, Chamber Gathering Major Real Estate Players for GROW Conference
On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 7, the new exhibit hall at Discovery Cube Orange County will fill with developers, investors, property owners, real estate brokers and business leaders as Santa Ana’s third annual GROW Conference gets under way, presented by Caribou Industries.
The theme for this year’s conference is “The Rise of Urbanization in the Heart of Orange County,” and topics under discussion will include adaptive re-use and transit-oriented development. The event includes networking and cocktails, and the guest moderator will be Steve Churm, chief revenue officer at Freedom Communications. Continue reading
Tom Daly
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Deidra Powell, Chief Communications Officer, (714) 558-5555 office, (714) 673-4995 mobile
Media Advisory
(May 14, 2015) – The Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education adopted a resolution at its May 12, 2015, Board meeting opposing Assembly Bill 715, a bill authored by Assemblymember Tom Daly, which proposes to revise the definition of assessable space for which school districts can collect developer fees. Developer fees were established to offset impacts to school facilities from new students generated from residential and commercial development. According to the resolution adopted by the Board, altering the definition of assessable space may limit the developer fees districts can receive from new development and may negatively impact school facilities. Continue reading
Santa Ana’s Housing Shortage: Will there ever be enough?
By Chris Taylor, INvision Santa Ana
With an average of 4.4 people per household, Santa Ana is one of the most overcrowded cities in the nation.i According to the 2013 Orange County Community Indicators Report, Santa Ana has the largest household size in Orange County and the 10th highest in the nation. ii To put that into perspective, if Santa Ana were to achieve the same average as the rest of Orange County, it would have to add 32,246 (or 41% more) housing units to the existing 76,896, and this does not even account for additional housing needs as a result of population growth in the near future. However, the most worrisome thing surrounding these facts is that the city and its leaders have completely inadequate goals to alleviate this enormous problem.
The city recently issued the new 2014-2021 General Plan Housing Element and I’d like to take this opportunity to point out some concerning parts of that plan here. For some reason, the city has recognized the immense overcrowding problem in the previous and current plans, yet has grossly failed to address the housing shortage. Even more worrisome is that in the last plan there was at least a call for more housing despite the inadequacy of these goals and the lack of follow-through; yet, in the current plan it seems that the city has decided to pretend that this problem doesn’t exist at all. Compare the following paragraphs taken from the same part of the respective plans: Continue reading
Downtown Santa Ana’s gentrification mob wants you to believe that they are not racist but the reality is that they have hated Mexicans forever and gentrifying the Downtown simply provided them with a means to an end.
One of them admitted as much when they sent a hate package to O.C. Register reporter Alejandra Molina. They scribbled over an article she wrote about the gentrification of our Downtown, scribbling this hateful message, “We made it over the border, whoopee…or our parents did.”
Now Santa Ana’s haters are riled up about the Santa Ana Wellness District. One of our readers forwarded us a particularly vitriolic message from a fellow named Tim Rush. Rush was one of many neighborhood activists who supported the illegal street barricades that were installed in Santa Ana’s French Park – to keep Mexicans out. The barricades had to be taken down after the ACLU beat the haters in court. Continue reading
The Calacas Cafe recently relaunched after changing from a coffee shop to a Mexican cafeteria to compete in the changing downtown atmosphere, labeled by some as one of the hippest scenes in Orange County, according to the O.C. Register.
With a new bar or restaurant opening downtown just about every other month, the owner of Calacas, Rudy Cordova, said he felt he just couldn’t keep up.
No one can keep up. There are only so many hipsters around and the only way that Downtown Santa Ana’s hipster food and drinking – and arts – scene is going to survive is with a massive influx of new customers. Continue reading
Mayor Miguel Pulido
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido has received at least $25,000 in contributions toward a legal defense fund that he established in January as he is being investigated by the state’s political watchdog agency, according to the OC Register.
The “Miguel Pulido Legal Defense Fund” was set up in January, shortly after City Attorney Sonia Carvalho began investigating a real estate swap involving Pulido that ethics experts say looks like a bribe and could have violated state conflict of interest laws, according to the Voice of OC.
My sources tell he that a few of the Santa Ana Council Members may want to set up legal defense funds of their own. One pajarito in particular told me last week that the FBI is looking at conflict of interest by the Council Members with regard to real estate development on Bristol and Seventeenth and at the property formerly known as the Honer Plaza which is now called the Bristol Marketplace. Continue reading
City of Santa Ana, Downtown Orange County
Community Alert: City, Chamber of Commerce Host Half-Day Economic Development Summit
SANTA ANA, CA (October 10, 2013) – On the morning of Wednesday, October 16, local business owners and managers will gather at the Delhi Center for Santa Ana’s first Economic Development Summit, sponsored by the City of Santa Ana, the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce and presented by Wells Fargo Bank. The event begins with breakfast, followed by nine workshops to be offered over a three-hour period, and then lunch with a panel of business owners. Continue reading