The city that sleeps first

Alex Coolman

Newport Beach, the sleepy town by the sea, becomes sleepier by the

day as its local spots for night life slowly fade out of business.

The Cannery Restaurant. Snug Harbor. Windows on the Bay. One by one

they drop out of the scene, leaving vacant storefronts and empty parking

lots.

For residents whose first priority is a good night’s rest, this is no

doubt a welcome development. But for the businesspeople whose livelihood

depends on entertainment -- not to mention the locals and tourists who

enjoy spending a night on the town -- the loss of area bars, clubs and

restaurants has raised a disconcerting question: Why, they ask, is it so

hard for nightlife to survive in Newport Beach?

For Bill Hamilton, the primary owner of The Cannery, the answer to

this question is troublingly easy to find. As far as he is concerned, the

fate of his business was sealed at a meeting in 1997, when the City

Council revoked his just-granted permit to allow dancing.

Hamilton made it clear at the time that the restaurant needed

entertainment revenue to survive, yet the city, reacting to protests from

The Cannery’s residential neighbors, ruled against him.

‘We had no entertainment, certainly no dancing permitted,” Hamilton

said. “And from that point on, our business went downhill.’

While The Cannery’s closure is clearly an event with complex causes --

construction on the Arches Bridge and competition from Fashion Island

also played a part in sinking Hamilton’s business, he says -- the city’s

role in the restaurant’s demise is conspicuous simply because The Cannery

is only the most recent in a string of bay-area entertainment venues

whose operations have been curtailed by local officials.

Windows on the Bay, once a popular and award-winning restaurant,

suffered the same fate as The Cannery earlier this year after significant

restrictions were placed on the hours the eatery could serve alcohol and

the manner in which it could use its bayfront patio, said Scott

Shuttleworth, the former Windows proprietor.

The restrictions included a 10 p.m. curfew on weekday patio service

and a ban on the use of stools at the bar. These regulations were added

despite the fact that police records showed only three complaints -- all

from the same household -- against Windows in the seven months before the

restrictions were added.

The restaurant lost about $400,000 in revenue from the measures,

Shuttleworth said, and ceased operations altogether Memorial Day.

“The net effect,” Shuttleworth said, “is you basically took an

upscale, award-winning restaurant and turned it into a weed farm.”

Other examples of entertainment venues that have been on the losing end

of city actions include the club Bacchus, shut down by the council in

1994; restaurants such as Joe’s Crab Shack, fined $100 in 1998 for its

waitresses’ excessively boisterous singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ to

patrons; eateries such as The Quiet Woman, where vice police presence has

created wary customers; and businesses, such as the financially troubled

Speedway Restaurant, where the conditional-use permit prohibits happy

hours, dancing, live entertainment and late-night patio service of

alcohol.

According to city officials, the closure of a few restaurants and

clubs says less about the atmosphere of the city in general than about

the realities of the volatile entertainment marketplace.

Mayor Dennis O’Neil emphasized the complexity of the economics

involved in situations like The Cannery’s.

“I suspect there’s a number of reasons why this wonderful place is no

longer going to be there,” O’Neil said. “It’d be nice to have a single

responsible party that we could all blame, but I don’t think we can do

that.”

Councilwoman Jan Debay voiced similar sentiments with regard to the

problems Shuttleworth encountered.

“I don’t think what happened through the city was the problem with

their business,” Debay said. “It was mainly timing with him. ... I’m not

sure because I can’t look at Scott’s books and tell you what happened.”

The perspective of the business people on the receiving end of the

city’s actions is, perhaps inevitably, rather different.

Rush Hill, the chairman of the civic affairs council for the Newport

Harbor Chamber of Commerce, resigned from his position as chairman of the

Newport Beach economic development committee in 1998 over what he called

“frustration in seeing the attitude of the city slowly change away from

supporting economic growth.”

Hill argued that the kind of restrictions placed on restaurants like

Windows on the Bay and The Cannery are problematic precisely because they

prevent businesses from coping with the challenges of the competition.

“‘The free marketplace was taken out of the equation,” Hill said.

“Those business owners were forced to operate with one arm tied behind

their back.

“The result is always the same. In the long run, they can’t do it.”

Hamilton and Shuttleworth agree that business has a tendency to

migrate away from Newport Beach because of the number of clubs in Costa

Mesa and other neighboring cities that offer live music and stay open

until 2 a.m.

Hill, along with Shuttleworth and other business owners who asked not

to be identified, argued that the city has moved away from a mixed-use

model of development -- where homes and businesses exist side by side --

toward a purely residential vision for the peninsula and harbor area.

The isolated commerce of Fashion Island, where orderly franchise

businesses dominate, is the alternative that the city, in Hill’s view,

seems to be favoring.

Despite that perception, there are a handful of businesses on the

bayfront that do offer nightlife and have been able to survive. Aysia

101, on West Coast Highway in Mariner’s Mile, is an upscale Asian food

restaurant that is a high-energy dance club on Fridays and Saturdays and

has a reggae band on Sundays.

James Raven, entertainment director for the restaurant, argued that

careful planning has allowed Aysia 101 to combine a vibrant night scene

with good community relations.

“The whole idea is to be responsible and proactive in what you do,”

Raven said. “You can anticipate the possible problems ahead of time and

go to your neighbors and alleviate the problems before they occur.”

O’Neil said he feels that “there are too many outlets on the peninsula

for the distribution, sale and consumption of alcohol,” but took

exception to the idea that any sort of plan exists to drive entertainment

out.

“If a place wanted to have live entertainment 24 hours a day and it

was done in a way that was not intrusive to the resident community ...

maybe they could get a permit for it,” O’Neil said. “I don’t know. I’m

really reluctant to generalize about it.”

The reality of doing business on the bayfront, however, is that the

residential communities -- specifically those of Lido Isle and Balboa

Island -- are organized, vocal and rarely enthusiastic about evening

noise. Proposals to expand or even maintain entertainment opportunities

at Windows and Speedway were met with flurries of protests from these

residents.

The mixed-use model of community, faced with such opposition, is

increasingly losing out, Shuttleworth said. The combination of homes and

entertainment is simply too volatile.

“I thought the term for that was ‘cosmopolitan,”’ he said. “New York

and Chicago seem to do very well with the mix, but maybe Newport Beach is

not ready to handle that.”

QUESTION: Footloose or fancy free? Is Newport Beach turning into

“Footloose” or are city regulations right on the mark?