Chapman Corridor Revitalization Plan

Placentia is a city with a rich heritage and a bright future. The City has a tremendous amount of work to build on with Old Town Placentia and the Transit Oriented Packing House Districts both allowing for new mixed-use projects and capitalizing on the forthcoming Metrolink station. The Chapman Corridor is a western gateway to the city and these unique areas. Revitalizing this corridor will create an inviting entry that welcomes residents and visitors while providing a connection to the adjacent districts and the City's Civic Center. Specially tailored standards and design guidelines, as desired by the City, will encourage the revitalization of the Chapman Corridor. To encourage multimodal travel and increase walkability, a component of this plan should also address the public realm.

History

Placentia, Latin for "a pleasant place, has retained a small-town image that has remained since settlers arrived more than 100 years ago. After it was incorporated in 1926, Placentia was known as the "baby city” on account of its status as the smallest in Orange County. Like many other Orange County towns, Placentia has been transformed from an agricultural area, where residents worked their own land, into a bedroom community where most residents leave the city for work. Placentia experienced several transformative changes that ended Placentia's orange-packing businesses ranging from a citrus disease that wiped out a majority of the orange groves to a period of exponential population growth in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.

Oil also played a part in Placentia's history. The Union Oil Co. discovered oil in 1919 on C.C. Chapman's land in northeast Placentia, and Samuel Kraemer, Daniels' son, also found oil on his property. This led to Placentia's first initial population boom.

The City of Placentia has remained a bedroom community until a golden opportunity presented itself in the form of a new Metrolink station adjacent to the City’s town center in Old Town Placentia. The station is to be located near Melrose Street and Crowther Avenue, just east of the Orange Freeway (SR-57). This new station will be the 13^th station on the Metrolink 91/Perris Valley Line, which runs from Los Angeles’ Union Station to Downtown Riverside and then further east to Perris. Metrolink expects an initial ten daily train trips and 530 daily passengers to use the station when it opens.  An estimated 350 vehicles are expected to park within a proposed parking structure located adjacent to the station. The positive effect of Metrolink passengers and the convenience of living near a train station provides a foundation for the revitalization of the City’s historic core. Leveraging this significant asset to transform this area into a transit-oriented destination was at the heart of the vision for the establishment of the TOD “Packing House District” along Crowther Avenue, including forging a development pathway from the city’s westerly boundary on Chapman Avenue to the Old Town core and then the Metrolink station.

Background

If Old Town Placentia and the Packing House District serve as the proverbial hook and line, it is lacking a sinker in Chapman Avenue to attract greater patronage to these districts. In recent years there has been little notable development along Chapman Avenue. Land uses are comprised of mostly postwar developments described as single- and two-story residential and commercial structures. The Chapman corridor contains a patchwork of land uses developed during different development booms from the 1920s through the 1980s. This one mile, stretch of thoroughfare between Placentia Avenue and the City of Fullerton’s easterly border and Kraemer Avenue and the City of Placentia Civic Center and Library, encompass approximately 55 acres of land primed for adaptive reuse and further economic investment with the primary goal of revitalizing and reimagining development along Chapman Avenue.

Objectives and Goal

City staff is seeking the revitalization of the Chapman Corridor with development standards and design guidelines that are specially tailored to their immediate neighborhood. A stretch of corridor that allows for integrated land use patterns that encourages multimodal travel, walkability, mixed-use development, high-density residential, public/private open space opportunities, and high-quality urban design that is in scale with a respective property and its surrounding area. The goal is to encourage a network of cohesive developments that revitalizes the corridor, provides a path to the Old Town and Packing House Districts, and anchor the westerly city boundary with the City’s Civic Center.

 On October 1, 2019, City Council adopted the comprehensive General Plan Update. This update included all Elements of the General Plan except the Housing Element, which was adopted as part of the required 6th Cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allocations in March 2022, and will come before this City Council as an amended document. The Land Use Element of the 2019 General Plan strongly encourages enhancements and improvements to the visual image, physical design characteristics, economic vitality, and infrastructure of the Chapman corridor.

Chapman Corridor Existing Conditions Story Map

Click here to visit the Chapman Corridor Existing Conditions Story Map: https://tinyurl.com/ChapmanCorridor. This resource provides a visual snapshot and narrative of Chapman Corridor today – how land is used, what surrounds the Plan Area, how residents get around, how the economy functions, and how the City’s physical form impacts development. The information presented in this Story Map is intended to establish a shared understanding of these important characteristics to highlight what we can build from and what we need to address in the revitalization of the Chapman Corridor.

Public Outreach

ln-person outreach opportunities are planned in an effort to inform this process. The city will be coordinating a variety of outreach efforts that will be disseminated to the public at large, including property owners, business owners, and stakeholders. These outreach efforts will be provided via fliers, the City's website, and social media as a means of engaging the community. Such scheduled outreach efforts will be noted below through the course of the development of the Chapman Corridor Revitalization Plan. These efforts are noted below as follows:

The intent of the in-person events will be to facilitate friendly and casual interactions while gaining valuable input for this project.

Should you have any questions regarding the status or progress of the Chapman Corridor Revitalization Plan, please feel free to contact the Development Services Department at (714) 993-8124.