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November 9, 2010 Karen Haluza Planning Manager City of Santa Ana Planning & Building Agency 20 Civic Center Plaza, M-20 Santa Ana, CA 92702 Subject: Revised Proposal to Prepare a Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the Harbor Boulevard Corridor Vision Plan (P2010-0808E) Dear Mrs. Haluza: Environmental processing pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a legal requirement, an objective analysis, and often, a highly technical exercise. At its core, however, it is a critical public and decision-maker disclosure process and should be an integral part of the planning process. The Planning Center will prepare a defensible Program Environmental Impact Report (PEER) for the Harbor Boulevard Corridor Vision Plan (Vision Plan). The environmental analysis will be coordinated with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) Demonstration Project to maximize efficiency and minimize overlap. We supported the City with their recent Housing Element, and are well qualified to assist the City with this project as well. At the request of the City, this revised proposal includes several revisions to reduce cost including: - Cost savings associated with overlap between PEIR traffic study and baseline traffic data processed for the SCAG Demonstration project. - Cost reduction associated with the City providing Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ) data for the IBI traffic impact analysis. - Cost savings associated with elimination of standalone technical reports for infrastructure prepared by IBI. Technical analyses for infrastructure will be prepared by IBI Group but will be incorporated directly into the PEIR. In addition, this proposal has been revised to include 9 additional intersections (total of 19) to be evaluated by IBI Group. Please contact us if you have any questions. We thank you for the opportunity to work again with the City of Santa Ana. Project Understanding The Harbor Boulevard Corridor is identified in the recent Housing Element update as an opportunity corridor to increase housing supply and diversity in the City. SCAG is working with the City to develop a Demonstration Project in this opportunity area. The Vision Plan would create a mixed-use transit corridor by redesignating land uses to accommodate residential and mixed-use development along Harbor Boulevard. Redesignation of land uses would require amendments to the North Harbor Boulevard Specific Plan and General Plan Land Use Element. The North Harbor Specific Plan boundaries generally overlap with the proposed boundaries for the Vision Plan. As part of the Vision Plan, it may be recommended that the boundaries of the North Harbor Boulevard Specific Plan be expanded. The approximately 2.25-mile corridor is commercially oriented. As a result of changes to the North Harbor Boulevard 0 1580 METRO DRIVE I COSTA MESA CA 92626 1 714.964.42201 714.966.9221 (1) W19W.PLANNINGCENTER.COM