No lawsuit pending for Greenlight

June Casagrande

NEWPORT BEACH -- A developer defeated at the polls last month in the

first test of the city’s Greenlight Initiative said Friday that he

doesn’t have any plans to sue the city.

Instead, Koll Center developer Tim Strader said he will get involved

in the city’s general plan update process. This approach, Strader said,

may offer the best chance of moving ahead with the $50-million,

250,000-square-foot Koll Center expansion voters shot down in November.

But Strader left open the question of whether he would take the matter

to court at a later date.

“We’re not going to take any legal action now,” he said. “We’re going

to participate in the general plan process -- that’s our focus.”

The 6,251-to-4,256 vote against Koll Center expansion made the project

the first casualty of Greenlight. That initiative, approved by voters in

November 2000, calls for a special election on projects large enough to

require an amendment to the city’s general plan. Specifically, Greenlight

requires voter approval on developments that would create more than 100

peak-hour car trips, more than 100 dwelling units or more than 40,000

square feet of floor area above what the general plan allows.

Beginning with a massive campaign on Jan. 12 to seek public input, the

city will start its overhaul of its general plan. The document lays out

guidelines for everything from coastal access to traffic to tourism --

but especially development, which is where Strader comes in. The plan

hasn’t been updated since 1988.

The results of a legal battle over the initiative are anybody’s guess.

Even experts disagree on how well Greenlight might stand up in court.

At the monthly luncheon of the Orange County Coast Assn. on Friday,

NCG Porter Novelli partner Rick Manter gave a presentation on slow-growth

and no-growth initiatives throughout the state. Manter said that, because

such measures hand to voters decisions normally made by legislators, it’s

possible that initiatives like Greenlight could be found

unconstitutional.

“We won’t know until someone takes one of these measuresto court,” he

said.

Expansion plans for the Koll Center office complex at the intersection

of Macarthur Boulevard and Jamboree Road had been in the works for

decades when, last year, Greenlight put the brakes on the project.

Strader has estimated that his company had spent about $500,000 on Koll

Center expansion before last month’s election stopped the project.

* June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)

574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 june.casagrande@latimes.comf7 .