Caspers Park : Permit Renewal Urged for New Research Center
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Orange County environmental officials have recommended that the Planning Commission should renew a permit Monday for a biomedical research company to build a research and development facility on a 101-acre site surrounded by Caspers Regional Wilderness Park.
The Nichols Institute previously had approval to build the site off Ortega Highway but did not get construction under way before the permits expired. Subsequently, the park, the site of two mountain lion attacks on children this year, was expanded, and it now surrounds the property.
The institute’s headquarters are in San Juan Capistrano, several miles west of the site of the proposed building.
County Environmental Management Agency planners recommended that the Planning Commission allow the construction of what eventually could become a 415,000-square-foot facility consisting of 23 glass modules in a campus-like setting.
Institute officials have said that the site will be developed in stages and that only 20 of the 101 acres will be used for buildings.
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