NEWPORT BEACH : Huge Flag Belongs to State of Limbo

It was to be the Bicentennial Committee’s greatest feat: a huge flag flying 80 feet high from a 14-foot base etched with the Bill of Rights.

Except nobody seems to want it in their neighborhood.

Residents near Lookout Point, a small, grassy area along Ocean Boulevard in Corona del Mar, recently presented the city with a petition protesting the plan to install the display there. Because of its size--the flag would be 20 by 30 feet--it would generate traffic and shatter the ocean view from the point, they said.

“One of the Bill of Rights is the right to petition the government, and that’s what we’re doing,” said Alice Remer, one of three area residents who presented the petition with 41 signatures.

It was the latest in a series of rejections the city’s Bicentennial Committee has faced since it began looking for a display site a year ago.

Committee Chairwoman Lynn Turner said the flagpole would have been the last--yet most significant--feat of the group, which has planted a “liberty” tree in Mariner’s Park and recognized local students for historical essays in the past four years. The $25,000 flag display would be paid for through private donations.

“We thought it was something the community could be really proud of,” Turner said.

Originally, the committee proposed a 150-foot pole to be placed at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Jamboree Road. However, after extensive negotiations with the city and the Irvine Co., which owns the land, the committee dropped the idea and starting looking at Inspiration Point on Ocean Boulevard in Corona del Mar.

Residents’ complaints that the display would ruin their views of the bay and the serenity of the area caused committee members to consider Lookout Point.

Remer commended the committee, calling members “fine people who want to do something good,” but said the display is not appropriate for the area.

She said the display with its 14-foot-wide base would take over the park, leaving little space to enjoy. In addition, the potential “slapping of a big thing like this and clanking of cords” is a concern, Remer said.

And while she offered other suggestions for a final project, like a display near City Hall, Remer stressed “nothing that would stand in that park would be acceptable.”

The neighbors, she said, are not “unpatriotic people; that’s not it. The flag is an object; we have a marvelous view here. We may as well enjoy it.”

Turner countered, “There are certain things that transcend our own places.”

The committee will meet next week to discuss the project, but Turner said she is resigned that the panel’s dream of dedicating the display on Dec. 15 in a ceremony attended by President Bush probably won’t happen.

“If it does not seem possible to put it there, then we’ll have to look somewhere else.”