Steve Marble -- NOTEBOOK

A short history of development in Newport Beach ...

Back in the days when Newport Beach was a rum-soaked town of gamblers,

risk-takers and opportunists, a man named Joseph Beek saw something that

others did not.

Balboa Island.

The sliver of land in Newport Harbor was rugged, wind-swept, forlorn -- a

place fit for birds and maybe an occasional fisherman. But Beek saw more

than that. He visualized homes and commerce and people.

And so, during the early going of the century, Beek brought development

to the island and started up a ferry service to bring in prospective

customers.

At first, it catered to the well-appointed families from Pasadena who

summered on the island and boarded up their cottages after Labor Day

passed, leaving the island to the sea gulls and the wisps of fogs that

blew in off the water. Eventually it became what it is now: a teeming,

picturesque, bumper-to-bumper, high-dollar slice of heaven.

And Allan Beek, one of the pioneer’s sons, has been trying to atone for

his dad’s sins ever since.

Allan Beek is the touchstone for slow-growth causes in Newport Beach.

Caltech-educated, bright, deadpan funny and quirky, Beek -- as much as

anyone else -- has been the person who makes developers squirm and wince.

And he’s back. Again.

Beek is a champion of something called the Greenlight initiative. Though

it sounds like some innocent measure to synchronize traffic signals or

something, it would actually give voters the opportunity to decide the

fate of certain proposed developments. In general, plans that strayed

greatly from the city’s master plan would be put on the ballot.

Ironically, it is hauntingly similar to Measure F, the South

County-spawned initiative that could kill airport plans for El Toro.

Although the fate of Greenlight won’t be tested until the November

election, it’s already had a chilling effect among developers. The Irvine

Co., for instance, has pulled back its plans for an expansion of Newport

Center, saying that the initiative added a heavy layer of fog to the

already hazy business of getting approvals and permits for their

proposal.

Others have followed suit.

For builders, the idea of jumping through the hoops of bureaucracy only

to have to fund an entire election campaign makes little sense. And maybe

that’s the whole idea.

But to Beek, this is old hat.

He helped lead the charge, not once, but twice, by getting voters to go

thumbs down on expansion plans for Newport Center. He was involved in a

failed election-day effort to nuke plans for a sprawling housing complex

along the bank of the Santa Ana River, a project that still has yet to

get off the ground. He later attempted to win support for something

called Gridlock, a slow-growth initiative that used a complex formula for

determining the fate of proposed developments.

Colorful names, high-voltage campaigns. But the theme has always been the

same -- slow the growth.

Voters, however, have been spotty on development matters. Sure, they shot

down the expansion of Newport Center. But then again, they refused to

spare the graceful Castaways property that overlooks Newport Harbor. It’s

now dotted with homes.

It’s almost as if voters don’t like development where development should

go, but think it’s OK to develop where development should not go. Or

something like that.

For all the elections and all the fights, nobody is really sure where

Newport Beach stands on growth issues. It is, and will continue to be, a

town of mixed messages.

So in a way, Greenlight will be a Woodstock reunion of sorts. All the old

friends. All the old enemies. A little grayer. A little older. But still

singing the same old songs.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor for Times Community News and can be

reached at o7 steve.marble@latimes.comf7 .