Irvine Watchdog Candidate Q&A: Larry Agran

  • October 21, 2024, 8:23 pm America/Los_Angeles

Larry Agran has been involved in Irvine politics on and off for over 40 years. He first served on the Irvine City Council from 1978 to 1990, which included six years as mayor. He is a public interest attorney and policy professional. Last elected to the City Council in 2022, he is currently the Vice Mayor. If Agran is elected Mayor in November, this would be his sixth non-consecutive term on Irvine City Council. 

Answers have been edited for clarity. 

Irvine Watchdog: A lot of people know you have been involved in Irvine’s political scene for over 40 years, and you could probably retire from local politics and still be thought of as someone who contributed and helped shape Irvine. What inspired you to run for Mayor again? 

Agran: What inspires me to run for mayor at this time is that I believe we are at a critical crossroads in our city as we approach buildout. The question becomes: ‘are we going to uphold our master plan?’ or ‘are we going to adopt policies that will eviscerate and destroy the master plan that we have spent 50 years meticulously putting together?’ There are some additional issues such as meeting the affordable housing crisis, maintaining our open space and building out the Great Park are all factors that inspire me to run for a term as mayor to see to it that we  do these things right and consistent with the master plan. 

Of the candidates running, it’s clear to me, and I hope it’s clear to the public as well that I maintain the record, the governing know-how, and skills to really get things done. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: The United States and the state are experiencing a serious housing crisis. Your statements and votes indicate that you are reluctant to build more housing in Irvine. What exempts Irvine from building more housing, especially at a time when the Governor and the Democratic nominee for president seem to be encouraging the building of more housing or finding ways to get people into homes?

Agran: Respectfully, the premise of your question is wrong. We do not have in Irvine or in California, we do not have a housing crisis. We have an affordable housing crisis. There is plenty of housing in the mid-range and high-range. Developers are building it all the time, building million and two million dollar homes and five and six million dollar homes. We have an affordable housing crisis. These two things are different. 

I yield to no one in building tremendous numbers of housing units in the City of Irvine over the last 30 or 40 years. Irvine has been the fastest growing city in the United States year after year. It’s not as though I’m opposed to building housing. We are not able to build our way out of the affordable housing problem. That’s not how we are going to get affordable housing. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: Give us some examples of affordable housing policies that you can support or would want to see. 

Agran: I think you have been witnessing this thing with the city council saying yes to 57,000 additional dwelling units between now and 2045 – 57,600 plus dwelling units. Building more units at that pace and at that magnitude would overwhelm our infrastructure system. We couldn’t build enough roads to make that work to handle the additional 100,000 cars. It would create an overcrowding problem that would in effect eviscerate our general plan that we have carefully nurtured over the years. 

I also want to claim credit for the 5,100 virtually permanent affordable housing units, mostly apartments through my leadership and the leadership of Mary Ann Gaido and others, we put in place in the City of Irvine. We have built more affordable housing that are part of market rate apartment complexes. It’s quite amazing what we have accomplished, but because we have such a severe affordable housing crisis, what I have proposed is not building another 57,000 units, hoping to get another five or 10 thousand affordable housing units out of it. 

What I have proposed is that we enter into a deal with the Irvine Company – the Irvine Company now owns and operates 35,000 apartment units in the City of Irvine, almost all of those are market rate rentals, I propose that we enter into a deal with the Irvine Company saying that if they want to do further development in the city that they have to make a deal to set aside 5,000 of those existing 35,000 units and discount the rents on those units by about 50%. This would make those units affordable for families that make $40,000, $50,000 or $75,000 dollars per year. This would be my plan to provide affordability more quickly. This idea that we aren’t doing our fair share if we don’t build 57,000 dwelling units over the next 20 years, that’s a trickle down theory that doesn’t make sense. We need to make a deal with the Irvine Company right now to provide instant affordability on 5,000 existing apartment units. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: In this deal that you are proposing, would limiting further development include commercial and retail as being off limits if the Irvine Company doesn’t comply with this plan to lower the rent on 5,000 apartment units? 

Agran: No. My plan is more reasonable than that. For example, they want to come in with a massive development in the Spectrum area. I’m not interested in just shutting them down, but before the city gives approval to the Irvine Company to build more units in the Spectrum area, we want to make a deal on these 5,000 apartment units to bring down the rent. This is a give and take relationship, but this is the time that they have to give, and we have to take. 

You have to give the Irvine Company some credit. They have been part of the evolution and planning for the city. They have made a tremendous profit from their apartment buildings, and now it’s time for us to insist that for affordability purposes, 5,000 of those units could have the rent be dramatically reduced for qualifying families and households. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: A lot of people in Irvine feel that they have to leave Irvine to find nightlife, more eclectic dining experiences, and the arts such as independent movie theaters or even intimate live performances like what you would find at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano or in smaller venues in LA County. What might you do to address this? In your view, why hasn’t there been more of an effort to provide these types of amenities for people who appreciate these experiences? 

Agran: I’m a little defensive about this because I think we provide an array of nightlife opportunities. Do people not visit the Spectrum Entertainment Center or do they not go out to Irvine restaurants or do they not attend performances at the Barclay Theater and the comedy club performances? What are people looking for? 

 

Irvine Watchdog: People don’t necessarily want to go to Costa Mesa, Long Beach, or up to LA to find more entertainment options. For instance, near UCI there could definitely be more nightlife since the student population seeks that out, and near the airport, there could be more options for people staying in hotels who want to walk outside of their hotel and find something fun to do nearby. Sometimes people are up late and want to grab a bite to eat beyond fast food. 

Agran: The Irvine Business Complex, the airport area has Diamond Jamboree in it, there are some places there that are open very late. I think that there are a few places that are open 24 hours there [in Diamond Jamboree]. But we don’t have neighborhood bars or hangouts in the older neighborhoods like what you may find in other cities. Where we could and should have more nightlife is in the Irvine Business Complex, in the Jamboree and MacArthur corridors, we should have more retail, dining, and a nightlife atmosphere. In this area, there are about 25,000-30,000 people living in apartments and condos. 

The problem is we don’t have the venture capital banging on the door to come in there and build those businesses for us. The city, of course, doesn’t build and own these facilities, so it’s left to others. We would like to stimulate those kinds of businesses to come to the Irvine Business Complex. I hope that the traditional demand and response process would work so we could attract some of these businesses in Irvine. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: Amy is an Irvine mom who stays at home raising her two children. She has experience working in restaurants and has formal training in culinary arts. She often makes fancy coffees and treats for neighbors on her street. Some of her neighbors have encouraged her to open a small cafe in Irvine where she can show off her pastry making talents and coffee creations, but she cannot find affordable rental space in shopping centers near her home to make this dream a reality. She doesn’t want to drive far to set up a shop in another city. 

California has made it legal for residents to open Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations, which have to go through a permitting process. Would you be in favor of allowing some small food or beverage businesses to operate from Irvine homes to help aspiring business owners get a foot in the market since commercial rent is high in Irvine? The thought here is this could help make neighborhoods more walkable, convenient, and foster the growth of microbusinesses. 

Agran: The answer is yes. I would consider this. This question’s premise is a reality we have to deal with. I receive many complaints about the difficulty in opening and maintaining an independent enterprise here in Irvine. Most of the retail centers are owned by the Irvine Company, and the company’s inclination is to favor highly capitalized retail, including restaurants. I do think the next council needs to press the Irvine Company to gain some understanding that they will make the commercial environment more hospitable for independent enterprises to thrive and succeed. If I’m elected mayor, I will put this at the top of my agenda – dealing with the Irvine Company. 

The idea of opening eateries outside of one’s home, I find that an intriguing idea. In a planned community, there are issues to consider about parking and offsite impacts. It would require some careful planning and conditioning. But I would be open to exploring this idea to help make it easier for residents to start small businesses. 

 

Irvine Watchdog: If you are elected Mayor or even if you are not elected mayor and return to the council, what do you want your legacy to be as someone who held elected office in Irvine? 

Agran: I have been fortunate to be involved as a private citizen and as an elected official on and off since 1978, so I have seen this planned city evolve over time. There are three or four real legacies that I want to speak to. One is having fought with and ultimately negotiated with the Irvine Company, we managed to secure more than 10,000 natural, open space wilderness areas surrounding the city. That open space legacy was put in the form of a ballot measure approved by the voters to make it permanent that can never be developed for other purposes. The second legacy is defeating the proposed international airport at the closed Marine station in El Toro, which was closed in the ‘90s. The county proposed an international airport, we defeated that idea on the fourth ballot initiative. This airport would have permanently devastated the City of Irvine. We have replaced that with a land use plan for The Great Park that is about a half built. It is a forever legacy. I also think of another legacy that was part of our planning policy that has made Irvine the most diverse and most thoroughly integrated city in the United States of America. We have people from all over the world from all different ethnicities in our city. We live and work together here in a thoroughly integrated environment. There is no city in the United States that enjoys that level of integration.