Is there a Port in art center storm?

Mathis Winkler

CORONA DEL MAR -- As City Council members prepare to decide Tuesday

whether they will even consider a proposal for an arts and education

center on open space behind the central library, the owner of the defunct

Port Theater said Friday he’d consider giving the center a home in his

building.

“Perhaps I can fulfill a niche and help out the city,” owner Scott

Burnham said. “Everybody has an idea for the Port Theater, and when I

started getting phone calls on this particular issue, it sounded like

there might be [a possibility] for complimentary use.”

The theater shut its doors in August 1998, and Burnham said he’s been

taking his time to come up with an alternative use.

“I’ve had the luxury of having the ability to be patient,” he said. “I

don’t need to quickly reopen the doors.”

But he added that he’d already considered splitting the theater’s

980-seat auditorium into two levels. While the top floor could be used

for classrooms -- a crucial component of the center proposal -- the lower

level could still serve as an auditorium capable of seating more than 600

people.

Environmentalists adamantly oppose building a center on the city’s

already scarce open space and have suggested the theater as an

alternative site.

“I would think something could be worked out,” said Allan Beek, who

has also brought up the Balboa Theater, the Orange County Museum of Art,

Bayview Landing and Corona del Mar High School as other alternative

sites.

Project supporters have questioned those places as workable

alternatives. The Balboa Theater will function as a professional center

when it opens next year. Further, museum officials said that while they

are looking at other sites to expand, they are years away from vacating

their home at Newport Center.

Bayview Landing is earmarked for affordable housing for seniors. And

the Corona del Mar High School and the Port Theater sites would cause

major traffic problems in their respective neighborhoods, center

proponents said. At the Port Theater, there’s also the issue of parking.

Arts Commissioner Don Gregory, one of the leading proponents of a

center, said he still believes a majority of council members might allow

further study of the site behind the library at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I’m very happy to sit down with any well-meaning person,” Gregory

said, adding that he still doubted that the theater would be adequate or

that the parking problems could be resolved.

Gregory also added that widespread support of the Port Theater as an

alternative site signaled to him that project opponents wanted to move

the center idea away from the open space and toward another site without

thinking about the consequences.

“What that says to me is, ‘Any place but here,”’ he said. “They just

want us out of there.”

Built in the 1940s, the theater existed before the city introduced

off-street parking requirements and remained open without a parking lot

for its patrons.

But Burnham said parking has never been an issue.

“People just tend to find a place to park,” he said, adding that he

would not have to find more parking if the theater opened again.

City officials said the issue’s a little trickier than that. Newport

Beach’s code states that old buildings such as the Port Theater lose

their exemption from parking requirements once they’ve been closed for a

certain length of time, said Assistant City Manager Sharon Wood.

Because Burnham has opened the theater for occasional events since the

closure, she added that she couldn’t say whether the theater could remain

exempt from stringent parking requirements without going over the

records.

Village leaders, such as Councilman Dennis O’Neil and Edward Selich,

who chairs the city’s Planning Commission and heads a group that plans to

revitalize East Coast Highway for Corona del Mar’s centennial in 2004,

said they welcomed Burnham’s interest.

“I think it would be a great idea to explore,” Selich said. “I think

people would welcome a way to save the Port Theater.”

Just like Selich, O’Neil added that center supporters, business owners

and residents would need to meet to see if there was any merit to the

idea.

“I don’t know whether it’s adequate,” said O’Neil, who favors a

passive park for the land behind the central library. “But I would think

that it’s worthy of consideration and review.”