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TTT 1.1.3 Existing General Plan and Zoning Seneral Plan The property is identified in the General Plan Land Use Element as District Center (DC). The District Center designation includes the major activity areas of the City, designed to serve as anchors to the City's commercial corridors and to accommodate major development activity. The site is also identified as being within the Downtown Redevelopment area (no longer active after the elimination of the Department of Finance's Redevelopment Agency in California.) The MainPlace District Center is a mixed -use designation identified in the General Plan as including a "regional shopping center and office complex, as well as high -intensity housing and mixed -use development" (Land Use Element, page A-22). Table A-2 of the General Plan identifies MainPlace as allowing a Floor Area Ratio of 2.1. The General Plan allows the FAR to be calculated on an area -wide basis rather than on a per -lot basis. District Centers are allowed up to 90 dwelling units per acre for residential uses. The General Plan's District Center designation would allow up to 4,486,074 square feet of mixed uses, inclusive of residential uses, based on the maximum FAR of 2.1 over the 49-acre site. As proposed, the MainPlace Transformation Project will result in a District -wide FAR of 2.08 and a density of 39 dwelling units per acre, within the maximums allowed in the General Plan. No General Plan Amendment is required or proposed. Zoning The existing zoning for MainPlace is General Commercial (C-2), which includes a range of commercial uses as well as all of the uses allowed in the Community Commercial (C-1) zone. The MainPlace Specific Plan, upon adoption by the City Council, would become the zoning for the property and would define the allowable uses within its boundaries. INTRODUCTION 1 1 1.1.4 Relationship to CEQA and Past CEQA Documentation The City of Santa Ana is the lead agency for purposes of environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). MainPlace has been the subject of prior environmental review. The Fashion Square Commercial Center Subsequent Final Environmental Impact Report (Final EIR) was certified by the City of Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency in 1983. The Final EIR was prepared to evaluate the potential impacts associated with buildout of the project site with up to 3.1 million square feet (sf) of office and retail uses and 1,200 hotel rooms. The project site was within a Redevelopment Plan Area as set forth in the Redevelopment Plan of the Santa Ana Redevelopment Project, as amended (June 1975) as addressed in the Redevelopment Plan Final EIR (May 15, 1975). As addressed in the Final EIR, the project assumed the rehabilitation and redevelopment of the site as a mixed -use commercial complex consistent with the City's Redevelopment Plan. Project implementation required demolition of Main Street Center Fashion Square and partial demolition of Fashion Square Center. The Final EIR assumed that 400,000 sf of the Fashion Square Center would be retained allowing for the ultimate buildout of the site with 1.5 million sf (net leasable) of office uses; 1.6 million sf (gross leasable) of retail uses; and 1,200 hotel rooms. In 1996, the City prepared an Addendum to the Final EIR to evaluate a then -proposed expansion of the shopping center's retail uses. The 1996 Addendum evaluated the topical issues addressed in the Final EIR, including the preparation of updated air quality and traffic analyses. The Addendum concluded that reliance on the prior Final EIR was appropriate because the impacts identified (in the Final EIR) "were much greater than the impacts associated with the existing facility plus the proposed expansion." While the 1996 project was not MAINPLACE SPECIFIC PLAN 1 1-7