Activists assail, others hail new Dunes plan

Jenifer Ragland

NEWPORT BEACH -- The Newport Dunes’ revised proposal for a resort hotel

that debuted at Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting has, not

surprisingly, received mixed reactions.

While commissioners seemed impressed with the proponents’ effort to

address some of the project’s critical issues, one opponent compared it

to a bad experience at a used car lot.

“It’s like asking an insane amount of money for a car so the lowered

price seems reasonable,” said Bob Caustin, a local environmentalist and

Dover Shores resident. “They’re playing a game as though this is some

kind of Turkish bazaar, and instead of taking what they’re entitled to,

they’re trying to see if they can run something past the people.”

The revised plan, which came after commissioners requested several

changes, reduces the total number of available rooms, including

time-shares, from 600 to 470; conference space from 55,000 to 46,000

square feet; and daily traffic trips from 4,800 to 3,630.

The commission had asked Dunes proponents to consider relocating the

project to the other side of the lagoon and changing the entrance from

Bayside Drive to Back Bay Drive.

Sharon Wood, assistant city manager, said commissioners eventually

dropped both ideas. The east side of the lagoon is more environmentally

sensitive and would require the project’s height to increase, Wood said.

And she said moving the entrance would eliminate 100 recreational vehicle

parking spaces.

“It appears they really went through their project to see where they

could cut so it wasn’t such a massive building,” said Ed Selich, chair of

the commission. “I thought they made a very responsible effort to go back

and address changes we requested of them.”

To help give the community a better idea of the project’s size, project

developer Evans Hotels agreed to put up balloon displays marking its

expected height and width.

Rather than the standard approach of using poles or wooden sticks to

simulate height, commissioners thought the balloons would be more visible

and more meaningful for people.

“And for this big of a project, the poles would have to be engineered,”

Wood said.

She said the balloon displays should be up for several days prior to the

commission’s March 9 meeting, when the board will again discuss the

project.

Key sticking points in the debate continue to be the increased traffic

the proposed hotel will generate and how the new project compares with

one already approved for the site.

That project, developed in the 1980s, calls for a 275-room family inn

with 5,000 square feet of retail and office space and 15,000 square feet

of free-standing restaurant space, which would generate 4,000 new vehicle

trips each day.

Robert Gleason, chief financial officer and general counsel for Evans

Hotels, said the figure for the new hotel is lower because restaurants

generate more traffic than conference space. Only 2,400 of the original

4,000 trips were hotel room-generated, he said.

But critics of the project say the traffic study and the project’s

environmental report lack common sense and are very difficult to digest.

Caustin said the Dunes should give up on the new proposal and stick with

the old motel plan that was devised in the late 1980s and early 1990s,

which he believes would be more attractive to vacationing families.

But Tim Quinn, project manager, continues to argue that the updated plan

is far superior.

“A two-star motel may have been great 20 years ago, but I don’t think

that’s the type of project the city wants to have today,” Quinn said.

“The city deserves to have a four-star destination hotel.”