A major project near Honda Arena and the ARTIC transit center in Anaheim is in the works, while another is planned for Santa Ana.

60% of Orange County cities challenge their targets, which are much higher than last time around.

Profileration of facilities in residential neighborhoods create clash with cities, especially in Orange County. >>read more

A proposed development in Newport Beach that has become a crucible for the California Coastal Commission was overwhelmingly rejected, 9-1. >>read more

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has blocked the City of Anaheim's attempt to build a surface parking lot on a property adjacent to two new hotels rather than a parking structure, as was implied in a conditional use permit the city approved in 1999.

Technically, the appellate court affirmed a trial judge's ruling that the city was estopped (a legal term essentially meaning prohibited) from enacting a subsequent conditional use permit � applying to the city's own property, not the hotel developer's property � that called for a surface lot rather than a parking garage and deviating from the city's own Resort Development Standards, which the hotel developer's own project had to meet.

The case involves a complicated arrangement in which Intercontinental Hotel Group had agreed to a smaller, redesigned project because of the city's plans to build an overpass over I-15 along Gene Autry Way that better connects Disneyland with Anaheim Stadium and other destinations east of the freeway. The overpass, which opened in 2012, takes up part of the hotel developer's property and also part of an adjacent property. >>read more

The City of San Clemente must refund $10 million in beach parking impact fees accumulated over a 20-year period because it did not build parking facilities with the money nor make the necessary findings under the Mitigation Fee Act to retain the money for more than five years, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

San Clemente imposed the "Beach Parking Impact Fee" of $1,500 per unit in 1989 because it concluded that new residential development in inland area of the city would increase the demand for parking near the beach. The city collected $10 million in the next 20 years but expended only $350,000 to purchase one parcel of property. >>read more

The City of Newport Beach improperly permitted a councilmember who was openly opposed to a bar's permit to appeal the planning commission's decision granting the permit and to vote on the permit appeal, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The appellate court also ruled that the trial court should not have granted the city a preliminary injunction to block the bar from operating under the permit approved by the planning commission.

On the question of whether the councilmember should have been permitted to appeal the permit, the appellate court wrote sharply: "The city council violated the rules laid down in the city's own municipal code, then purported to exempt itself from that code by invoking some previously undocumented custom of ignoring those rules when it comes to council members themselves."

Regarding the preliminary injunction, the court wrote: "It is hard to maintain the city's actions were likely to be upheld when it had no authority to act in the first place."