Newport Beach narrowly moves Marinapark onward

June Casagrande

NEWPORT BEACH -- What should have been a routine step in the process

for the developer of a 147-room luxury resort instead left that project

dangling by a thread at Tuesday’s City Council meeting until council

members voted 4 to 3 to allow the developer to begin gathering

information on the project’s effects on traffic and the environment.

More than a dozen residents spoke out against the project.

“It disgusts me,” said Councilman Gary Adams, who joined council

members Norma Glover and Dennis O’Neil in opposing the request. “People

are saying, ‘I don’t want to hear the facts.”’

The question before the City Council was whether to allow developer

Stephen Sutherland to begin environmental studies, including traffic

studies, for a proposed resort at Marinapark.

“What we’re hearing tonight is three council members for it and three

against it and, what’s surprising is the ones for it are the ones you’d

expect to be against it, and vice versa,” said Councilman Steve Bromberg,

who agreed to move forward.

Greenlight Councilman John Heffernan said he was solidly in favor of

permitting the developer to begin gathering information, but other

council members, such as Adams, who lauded the project as “a gem on the

peninsula,” said the public mood was so anti-development that he would

not support moving the project forward.

Some council members had suggested Sutherland first rally community

support and then return to the council to reinitiate the process.

“If I’m asked to, I will,” Sutherland said. “I had planned on going

door to door as part of the studies because if people would ask me, ‘What

about traffic?’ I don’t have any studies now to tell them what the

impacts would be.”

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

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