Developer hears neighbors’ concerns about homes planned for site of Costa Mesa storage facility

A Northern California-based developer looking to build 56 homes on the site of a storage facility in Costa Mesa hosted a community meeting about the proposal Thursday.

Concord-based DeNova Homes is in escrow to purchase Baker Storage, 929 Baker St., and is working with City Hall on plans to build single-family houses on the 4.7-acre site.

The parcel, adjacent to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District headquarters in the Mesa del Mar neighborhood, has been used commercially since the 1960s but has been zoned for medium-density residential for at least a decade.

In a meeting at the storage facility attended by about 40 residents from Mesa del Mar, DeNova officials and their consultant, Peter Naghavi, a retired Costa Mesa economic development director, answered questions about the project.

They said the two-story homes, whose starting prices are expected to be in the $800,000s, will contain up to four bedrooms and range from 1,975 to 2,400 square feet. Three architectural styles are proposed: modern Spanish, plantation and modern farmhouse.

“It’s going to be a beautiful project,” Naghavi said.

Naghavi, a Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce board member and former traffic engineer, said the development is projected to cause less traffic than the storage facility would. As a general rule, he said, commercial uses cause more car trips than residential properties.

Some residents were skeptical about that and expressed concern about the new tract’s residents parking on their streets, like some in the Sommerset condominium community across Baker have.

Naghavi said the tract will meet city parking standards, with each home having room for four vehicles: two in the garage, two in the driveway. It also will have five to 13 guest spaces, depending on the final layout plan, which is scheduled to go before the city Planning Commission on July 25.

The development is proposed to include a small park with a tot lot.

Though some residents expressed frustration about new development in Costa Mesa, Naghavi said houses replacing Baker Storage is all but inevitable, especially since the land has been zoned that way for some time.

He noted that DeNova had 25 competitors for the property.

Baker Storage opened in 1987 and is co-owned by the Holmes and Sorenson families. The Sorensons live on and manage the facility, which contains about 600 storage units and 133 parking stalls for recreational vehicles and boats.

Before Baker Storage opened, the site had light industrial uses dating to the 1960s.