Local News in Brief : Orange : Medical Center’s Road Compromise Approved

The County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an agreement ending a dispute with UCI Medical Center over use of a road that both sides consider essential to their plans for more than $200 million in expanded facilities in Orange.

Board members voted, 4 to 0, with Supervisor Don R. Roth absent, to ratify the accord that allows both the county and UCI Medical Center to use the road known as Dawn Way and to share the cost of maintaining the private, four-lane road that divides university and county facilities east of the City shopping center mall in an area known as the Manchester Complex.

Both sides also agreed not to pursue threatened legal action. County officials had filed a lawsuit to halt UCI’s building of a 700-space, six-story parking garage next to the medical center. The UC Board of Regents has authorized a suit against the county to block a proposed expansion of Theo Lacy Branch Jail at the site.

County officials forced the confrontation when they complained that UCI had begun building the garage without consulting the county or assessing the level of traffic that it would generate.