Live/work area: pass/fail?

Costa Mesa’s City Council wants developments that let residents live where they work. Fullerton has them.

Both cities say they are trying to use the developments to liven up their downtown neighborhoods, decrease commuter traffic and build up districts with heavy foot traffic.

In many ways, the two cities’ initiatives appear to be headed in the same direction, with Fullerton having a few-year head start on Costa Mesa. Since it put up two live/work developments — SoCo Walk and Amerige Heights — Fullerton has had a chance to see some of the things that make for a successful or unsuccessful live/work project.

“I don’t know how successful live/work is. Everyone is seeing that it really depends on location and surroundings and the synergy you can build on,” said John Godlewski, Fullerton’s director of community development.

One thing Godlewski has found in looking at the city’s live/work projects is it’s important to have a high density of similar complexes in an area so that the walking culture can really take hold.

Live/work developments are still in their infancy in Fullerton, and such a density has not yet been achieved, but it’s paramount to the eventual fulfillment of the city’s vision, Godlewski said.

For more than a year now, Costa Mesa has been trying to get developers to put in condominiums with businesses on the bottom floor, or similar projects in place of industrial buildings to revitalize the Westside. The first two projects in this vein were approved by the council earlier this summer, but neither has been built yet.

The city attributes the lull in developers taking advantage of the opportunities it is providing to the ailing housing market, but thinks an upturn in the economy will bring the project closer to fruition.

Some Fullerton officials say it’s imperative to choose the right types of businesses to put side-by-side with residential developments.

“A few of the business owners have struggled a little bit who have done retail stuff. A lot of the live/work makes more sense for people who aren’t relying so much on traffic and who have a core business,” said Fullerton Councilman Shawn Nelson.

So far, though, Fullerton has not been very selective with the types of businesses it allows in live/work situations. People have used the bottom story of their houses for coffee shops, ice cream parlors and the like — businesses that draw a lot of traffic and have stringent building requirements — and they have failed.

Costa Mesa’s council has unanimously voiced opposition to such uses, saying it would rather have businesses that didn’t draw many customers and didn’t generate a lot of noise.

“I think our planning process was probably superior to Fullerton’s,” Mayor Eric Bever said.

Moving forward, Councilwoman Katrina Foley said the council needs to come up with a comprehensive vision for what it wants downtown and the Westside to look like. Without a plan, Costa Mesa’s development won’t be cohesive, she said.

“My vision for that area is to really highlight what is there and bring it up,” Foley said, citing the extreme sports industries that have their roots on the Westside.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].