Planners OK nearly 50 new homes in Costa Mesa
The Costa Mesa Planning Commission approved plans for nearly 50 new homes throughout the city Monday night, including a tract that would replace a Mesa Verde church.
First Church of Christ, Scientist’s 2-acre property at 2880 Mesa Verde Drive East is now slated for 10 single-family homes.
City planners described the roughly 3,300-square-foot houses as “Santa Barbara style,” featuring cosmopolitan shingle roofs, stucco with stone siding and veneers.
Developer Peter Zehnder of Aliso Viejo-based Pinnacle Residential hosted private sessions with the nonprofit Mesa Verde Community Inc. earlier this year to get input from residents.
Hearing their concerns, Zehnder lowered the number of homes planned for the site from 13 to 10. The change gave the remaining houses larger lot sizes — a minimum of 6,902 square feet — and increased open space throughout the project from 45% to 55%.
The City Council would have to approve a zoning designation for the property from what’s known as institutional and recreational to low-density residential.
First Church of Christ, Scientist started in 1956 in Newport Beach and bought the Mesa Verde Drive location in 1967, moving in a year later.
In 2007, the church’s clerk, Cindy Dye, recalled in a Daily Pilot article how the church heard offers from developers but didn’t take them.
“The land is quite valuable, and the church has had several offers to sell, but they’ve always been turned down,” Dye told the Pilot. “We’re an older congregation now. It seems like most of the young families have moved to South County, so that has changed.”
Zehnder’s firm recently developed another former church site down the street, at 1259 Victoria St. That property is now a 17-unit community called Westreef, with homes starting in the low $800,000s. It was formerly home to the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church.
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Other projects
Commissioners also greenlighted 32 homes that will replace a 1.8-acre boat storage yard at 1672 Placentia Ave.
The homes are the contemporary “live-work” style increasingly prevalent in the Westside, featuring rooftop decks and bottom-floor office spaces.
Commissioners approved replacing rental units at 2366 Orange Ave., in the Eastside, with six two-story homes on a nearly half-acre lot. The homes would range in size from about 2,250 square feet to 2,700 square feet.
The project was met with some neighborhood discord, with one East Wilson Street resident calling it an “egregious travesty.”
Homeowners expressed concern that the two-story homes would be out of place in the neighborhood of single-story houses. Furthermore, they contended, the taller houses would grant unobstructed views into some backyards.
To ease the privacy concerns, the commissioners ruled that the developer will need to work on adding landscaping that provides better screening.
