CORRESPONDENCE - WSA_REGARDING SUNSHINE ORDINANCE

Home Browse Search

LYON COMMUNITIES"" CAPITAL VENTURES COM MUNITV ?EVELOPM ENT - PROPERTY MANAGEMENT September 17, 2012 Mayor Miguel Pulido and Members of the City Council City of Santa Ana 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92702 To The Santa Ana City Council: As you're aware, Lyon Communities has been an active participant in the City of Santa Ana - specifically, as a developer of first class multifamily residential communities. We recently broke ground on a 300 unit corrununity named "The Marke," located at the comer of Main and MacArthur Blvd. (a total investment of over $100,000,000). It has been brought to our attention that a group of con?iiiunity activists "SACRED" has brought forth the "Sunshine Ordinance" to be considered by the City Council on Monday September 17, 2012_ One of the purposes of this ordinance is to provide more transparency and community involvement throughout the development process. However, it's troubling and borderline hypocritical that SACRED has failed to reach out to the development community to discuss and obtain input on this new policy prior to requesting the City Council for approval. SACRED is hardly providing a good example of transparency by taking this approach. The City of Santa Ana already has a good reputation of community involvement throughout the development process. For example, for the re-entitlement effort of the "The Marke" (our newest project referenced above), we attended (3) Study Sessions with the Planning Commission, (1) Planning Commission Hearing, and (1) City Council Meeting in order to receive approval for the project. This was a total of (5) public hearings with notifications properly provided in accordance with California State law and the City's municipal code_ In addition, staff encouraged us to meet with the Sandpointe Neighborhood Association (whom we met with twice) and the Hutton Centre Master Association (whom we also met with twice) to obtain input and concurrence for the project. The fact that the project received unanimous approval from both the Plamiing Commission and the City Council, is a direct result from the many hours spent obtaining this community input. Lyon Communities is fully supportive of community involvement throughout the course of the entitlement process. It is our opinion that the City of Santa Ana already encourages this with its existing policy. As evidenced above, the City Council and City Staff already require developers to seek substantial community input. It appears that this proposed ordinance will be a burden on developers by increasing costs and timeframes, while at the same time decreasing the City's own efforts to encourage quality development. 4901 Birch Street Newport Beach, CA 92660 949-252-9101 pnone - 949-252-9202 a,x - LyonCommunities.com