Center Finds Common Ground
The challenge: Build a 10,000-square-foot nature center overlooking one of the state’s most environmentally sensitive areas, Upper Newport Bay, and put it in front of Newport Beach homeowners who don’t take kindly even to trees that block their panoramic views.
Daunting? Yes. For Tim Miller, it meant years of planning for Orange County’s Upper Newport Bay Nature Center, which, when finished in December, will be the county’s biggest park structure.
Getting the $3.8-million center built was like a course in Compromise 101 for Miller, head of the county’s harbors and beaches division.
Critics did not want it to be so large. Purists said, “Why build anything?” Many eyed the interior classrooms, desks and wet and dry laboratories on the drawing boards with suspicion.
“We heard from naturalists who wanted to preserve their favored endangered species,” said architect Ron Yeo of Corona del Mar. “And we had some endangered species eating other endangered species. It got to the point, what are you going to do?”
But Miller had built a wide support group and continued to work out compromises.
Early on, he won backing from Frank Robinson, the 80-year-old granddaddy of Upper Bay environmentalism. Robinson’s foundation donated $55,000 for part of an interior exhibit. Then Miller garnered support from a wealthy Santa Ana businessman and his wife, Peter and Mary Muth, who donated $1 million to help build the center.
To mollify surrounding homeowners, construction went down, not up.
“We wanted something that didn’t attract visitors so much and didn’t detract from the views,” Miller said. “The whole idea was build down into the ground, burying the center. We needed something that blended in.”
Yeo’s plans called for the removal of tons of earth, creating an underground construction site. Once done, dirt will cover the facility, allowing natural grasses to grow and help conceal it from neighbors, who can continue to watch the summer sunsets from their balconies.
“I think it works out nicely,” neighbor Mark Ross said about the underground construction. “They wanted it to be less of an intrusion, and building it this way helps it blend in.”
As for the facility, Ross said he believes “it’s a great thing” for the park, though he was not as enthusiastic about parking problems that may occur if the place becomes extremely popular.
Since the 1960s, when Robinson moved to a home near Upper Newport Bay, the back bay area has had a reputation for anything but a peaceful setting. “There was always a war going on for something,” Robinson said.
In one well-publicized battle, Robinson and other Newport homeowners thwarted plans by the Irvine Co. to develop the upper bay. The company lost a court fight to Robinson’s Orange County Foundation for the Preservation of Public Property, which argued that tidelands are part of a public trust and cannot be handed over to private developers.
The developer eventually negotiated a sale of 750 acres to the state for $3.5 million, which created the upper Newport Bay preserve. As part of yet another settlement, the company turned over 144 acres of bluff-top areas, including the new park site, in order to expand Fashion Island.
Robinson said the nature center will be used to explain the spectacular wildlife and the wetlands below. About half of the center’s interior will be filled with exhibits. The Upper Newport Bay Naturalists, a local volunteer bay preservation organization, has agreed to provide wildlife lectures from volunteers.