Voters Approve Office Tower

SANTA ANA, CA-Early returns from a special city election held Tuesday show voters giving the green light to a 37-story tower in Downtown Santa Ana. Yes votes for the One Broadway Plaza project proposed by developer Michael Harrah were leading No votes by a margin of about 55% to 45% in early returns with all of the city's precincts having reported.

The Santa Ana City Council approved the project in July and was ready to go with a development agreement and a general plan amendment that would authorize the tower, but opponents organized a referendum designed to block the project. Tuesday's vote is the latest in a growing number of special local elections being held in California as supporters and opponents of development projects increasingly take their cases to the voters when they don't like city development decisions.

Harrah's tower, which would be built on a site of slightly more than four acres at Washington Avenue and Sycamore Street, would include a parking structure and would involve the demolition of some existing buildings. Supporters of the project argue that it would help to revitalize Santa Ana's Downtown by including retail and restaurant space, parking and other amenities within walking distance of city hall. They also say it would boost the economy by bringing in construction jobs, attracting important corporations that could be tenants in the building and boosting the city's tax base. Opponents of the project argue that it is in the wrong place, too close to the Ronald Reagan Office Building, which it would tower over, and too close to nearby schools. They also oppose the demolition of buildings considered historically significant and they cite an environmental impact report saying that the skyscraper would add more than 6,000 auto trips per day to already crowded city streets.

Although the supporters appear to have won, city elections are not always the last word in highly contested developments like this one because opponents sometimes turn to the courts to challenge election results or some other facet of the project. In September, for example, voters in Glendale approved L.A. developer Rick Caruso's plan for a new open air shopping center Downtown, but Chicago's General Growth Properties, which had opposed the project in the special election, filed a lawsuit challenging the development's EIR. In January, a Los Angeles Superior Court ruling upheld the EIR.

In another case of developer versus developer, L.A.'s Kilroy REIT has fought to prevent development of a mixed-use office project in El Segundo by Thomas Properties Group of Los Angeles. Kilroy opposed the project in a special city election in 2002 and later, after losing in the election, filed a lawsuit challenging the EIR. In 2003 and 2004 respectively, the Los Angeles Superior Court and the California Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of Thomas, which was a private company when it proposed the project but has since gone public.