HomeMy WebLinkAbout5 - PUBLIC COMMENT_OROZCOFrom:Salas, Diana
To:!City Clerk; Fregoso, Vince; Bernal, Sarah; Gutierrez, Fatima; Pezeshkpour, Ali
Subject:FW: Planning Commission Item No. 1 - PUBLIC COMMENT – PLEASE READ ALOUD DURING PUBLIC HEARING
Date:Thursday, April 02, 2020 4:43:50 PM
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Good Afternoon,
The following communication pertaining to the Planning Commission meeting, has been
received for your review and consideration.
Kind Regards,
Diana Salas |Support Staff
Clerk of the Council Office | 20 Civic Center Plaza | Santa Ana, CA 92701
714-647-6520 | dsalas@santa-ana.org
www.santa-ana.org
www.ocvote.com
This e-mail (and attachments, if any) may be subject to the California Public Records Act, and as such, may, therefore, be
subject to public disclosure unless otherwise exempt under the Act.
From: Lisandro Orozco [mailto:orozcolisandro@outlook.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2020 4:27 PM
To: eComment <ecomment@santa-ana.org>
Subject: Planning Commission Item No. 1 - PUBLIC COMMENT – PLEASE READ ALOUD DURING
PUBLIC HEARING
PUBLIC COMMENT – PLEASE READ ALOUD DURING PUBLIC HEARING
To members of the Planning Commission,
My name is Lisandro, I own a home in French Park and have lived in town my entire life. I
support the conversion of a portion of the tower from office to residential.
I usually do not attend meetings or write correspondence in support because it takes too
much time, much like normal residents in Santa Ana, even if they support projects. With that
said, I am also pretty lazy. Anyway, after listening to the meeting on Monday and learning of
the 10-15 people that are opposed to this conversion I wanted to point a few things out:
Number One: Santa Ana already has the tallest residential towers in Orange County.
Two buildings, each almost 300-feet tall, with 349-units at 9 and 15 Macarthur Place.
Residential towers are not new for us. People in those towers love them.
Number Two: There’s plenty of examples of mixed-use towers. It’s a common practice
in urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, so on and
so forth. People like this stuff, whether or not they are hip and cool.
Number Three: The office tower is already approved. Taking out a portion of office
and replacing it with residential will create less traffic. This is a fact and a standard
known across the traffic engineering and planning profession. You and I are not traffic
engineers, and neither are most of my neighbors. So why are people still complaining
about traffic when this modification actually reduces the amount of cars that will be on
the road once its built?
Number Four: Finally, if there is one area where it is appropriate to build a tall tower
its midtown. Historically, this part of Santa Ana has been home to the tallest buildings
in the City and for a time, in Orange County. The first real high-rise in OC was built
across the street from this site, the Crocker Citizens Bank tower in the late 50s. It was
followed by United California Bank, First National Bank, and the Security Bank
Building, all right next door to this site. This was once OC’s financial center until Irvine
incentivized taller buildings by the airport and now all the financial jobs have left this
area and moved to Irvine.
In summary, they provide more parking than is required and they are reducing the amount of
traffic that would occur otherwise. Finally, by adding residential there will be more folks
walking in this area after 5 pm. When was the last time you walked down this block of
Sycamore Street at 7 pm on a Monday? I walk by here all the time in the evenings and it is
dead. It needs help and this does that.
This will be a much-needed improvement and give this town another landmark. It’s easy to say
no to everything, change is hard I get it but Santa Ana isn’t Tustin, we are a big city. Let’s vote
yes on this and hope Harrah can finally clean up the City’s largest sandox.
Have a goodnight and stay healthy.