IBC Housing
Editor’s note: The following is an open letter to the city of Irvine from the owners of Deft Inc., an Irvine maker of stains, coatings and finishes.
Deft Inc. has been an important corporate citizen and industrial business in the Irvine Business Complex for more than 30 years.
With these years of service and contribution to the community, we have looked forward to the long-range planning of the Irvine Business Complex to resolve our growing concerns about the dire impacts of residential uses in close proximity to existing industrial businesses such as ours.
The city has appointed a task force, which held its first meeting on March 21. We expected this task force meeting to be a welcome forum to discuss all ideas including our concerns about our industrial adjacency issues.
We expected the task force to live up to a Feb. 27 promise of engaging all stakeholders including existing industrial users in a thoughtful and meaningful dialogue.
We are sorry to report that the promise is being frustrated.
At the March 21 meeting of the Irvine Business Complex Task Force, we attended but were relegated to outsider status. The only stakeholders who participated and had a seat at the table in this first meeting of the Irvine Business Complex Task Force were representatives of the development and planning community.
During public comment, we noted that the task force had decided to continue its April 11 meeting. We suggested that the task force hold this meeting and hear from the existing industrial businesses that would be seated at the table as the development community was seated at the table.
This meeting could be devoted to discussion of industrial concerns and avenues for cooperative growth. The task force did not even discuss the issue. The task force did not want to hear from its existing business citizens; it appeared to only want to hear from developers.
In line with this exclusion, the task force’s hostility was palpable. Planning Commissioner Adam Probolsky argued with everyone who presented a view that differed from those of the development community. The members of the task force were mute.
We have a long way to go in this planning process for the Irvine Business Complex, and we are not that far apart.
Deft and other existing industrial users can embrace residential uses in the Irvine Business Complex so long as we have sufficient buffers to mitigate the incompatibility of residential uses adjacent to Deft and other industrial uses.
We welcome the opportunity to take our rightful seat at the table with the development community to discuss these issues thoroughly, thoughtfully and without rancor or abuse.
Mary Ann Desmond,
Tony Desmond
co-owners, Irvine-based Deft Inc.
Subprime Lending
Great column! (“Outlaw Subprime Lending? No Way,” May 7.) The feds start clomping through the woods to kill the weeds and kill too many flowers in the process.
Allen P. Baldwin
Orange County Community Housing Corp.
Santa Ana
