Item 27 - Appeal Application Nos. 2020-03 and 2020-04 - Central Pointe Mixed-Use Development

Home Browse Search

jmf 1/05/21 II. Failure to include qualified Santa Ana residents, veterans, graduate and/or certificate holders of the Santa Ana Unified School District and Rancho Santiago Community College District in the project's construction workforce. III. Failure to ensure the maximum amount of viable commercial development is provided. E. On January 19, 2021, the City Council conducted a duly noticed public hearing on Appeal Application No. 2020-03 and found that: In approving the Central Pointe Project, the Planning Commission found that it was adequately evaluated in the previously certified 2007 Metro East Mixed -Use (MEMU) Overlay Zone EIR and 2018 Subsequent EIR (collectively "MEMU EIR") prepared for the MEMU Overlay. SAFER contends that this was error, because the MEMU EIR "was a programmatic EIR, not a project -level EIR," asserting that the Project has never been analyzed under CEQA. While the MEMU EIR was a Program EIR, SAFER is nevertheless incorrect. A Program EIR is a type of EIR allowed under the California Environmental Quality Act that is used to evaluate a plan or program having multiple components or actions that are related either geographically, through application of rules or regulations, or as logical parts of a long-term plan. Subsequent activities called for by the Program EIR are compared against the Program EIR and, when consistent with the Program EIR, may be approved without the need for further environmental review. Once a project is approved, CEQA does not require that it be analyzed anew every time another discretionary action is required to implement the project. Quite the opposite, where an EIR has previously been prepared for a project, CEQA expressly prohibits agencies from requiring a subsequent or supplemental EIR, except in specified circumstances provided in Public Resources Code 21166 and CEQA Guidelines Section 15162. Specifically, an agency may not require a subsequent or supplemental EIR unless: (1) Substantial changes are proposed in the project which will require major revisions of the previous EIR due to the involvement of new significant environmental effects or a substantial increase in the severity of previously identified significant effects; (2) Substantial changes occur with respect to the circumstances under which the project is undertaken which will require major revisions of the previous EIR due to the involvement of new significant Resolution No. 2021-XXX Page 2 of 12