CLOSER LOOK -- Clock ticks on Marinapark residents

June Casagrande

NEWPORT BEACH -- For 17 years, residents of Marinapark have known

their days were numbered.

But when the mobile home park’s lease with the city expired on Friday,

questions dating back to 1985 still lingered.

Since discussions began in February about renewing the lease, city

officials have driven home the point that the 15 full-time and 41

part-time mobile home park residents have known all along they would be

asked to leave.

The 1985 lease said the city would eventually turn the beachfront

property into a public use. What’s more, city officials have said, the

residents have been compensated in advance for expense and inconvenience

of their inevitable departure.

The original lease, officials say, included a rent break. The lease

tied rent hikes on the lots, called “coaches,” to the Consumer Price

Index.

As a result, officials say, residents there are now paying only a

portion of the market-rate value of the coaches. A parcel that now costs

$1,362.60 a month, city officials say, is really worth $2,300. The lots

that cost $924.83, they say, are worth $1,950.

City staff has proposed raising rents to these values as part of a

one-year lease renewal, with two one-year extension options. But

Marinapark residents said these nearly doubled rates aren’t at all fair

when you take into account the insecurity of the short-term lease.

“Your whole basis of determining the value of our lease is flawed,”

Betty Berkshire, a full-time Marinapark resident, told council members.

Councilman Gary Adams heard their pleas, ultimately persuading the

council to postpone a vote on the lease until an objective appraiser

could determine a fair price.

But the rent question is just one of several serious unresolved issues

for the property.

Mobile homes or hotel?

The fate of the mobile home residents hinges on a luxury resort

planned for the site.

In the late 1990s, the City Council identified Sutherland Talla

Hospitality as the developer of choice for the site. Since that time,

Stephen Sutherland has hammered out plans for a 147-room luxury resort

some council members have said would be a gem to rejuvenate the aging

Balboa Peninsula.

Around the same time they picked Sutherland, council members were

working on a two-year lease extension for the Marinapark residents. As

part of the amendments, wording in the lease was changed.

Instead of a “public recreational use” for the land, Marinapark

residents would move out to allow for a “visitor-serving use,” the

modified lease said. By this definition, Sutherland’s resort would be

appropriate, perhaps ideal for the site.

Residents have cried foul at the change in language, saying it defies

the intent to turn the area into a park with public options for boating

and other water recreation.

Though Sutherland’s plan includes public beach access and public park

areas, some say these concessions are a far cry from the city’s original

vision for the property.

“A five-star hotel would be accessible only to the elite,” full-time

resident Joe Ribus said.

But Adams said this doesn’t affect the city’s obligation to the

Marinapark residents.

“They knew 17 years ago that their lease would expire in 15 years,”

Adams said. “Then they got a two-year extension. Now that time is up and

we’re saying, ‘We’ve been pretty nice, we’ve let you stay here longer

than we thought.’ I don’t see why this wouldn’t be something that would

make them happy. We do have fiduciary duty to make sure we’re getting

appropriate revenues for this property. It’s only fair that we get fair

market rents.”

State could have final say in land use

Further muddying the waters is the question of whether the Marinapark

property is designated as tidelands.

Areas designated by the State Lands Commission as tidelands cannot be

used for residential purposes. But the criteria for determining which

areas are tidelands is in dispute statewide, leaving it unclear how

Marinapark should be classified.

Mayor Tod Ridgeway said he believes the bulk of the land on which the

mobile homes sit is in fact tidelands, meaning the city is obligated to

eventually end any residential use of the land. Visitor-serving uses,

such as Sutherland’s hotel, are permitted in tidelands.

The city acquired the 4.34-acre Marina park parcel at 1770 W. Balboa

Blvd. in 1919 from the Pacific Electric Land Co. for a public campground,

where campers paid 75 cents a day for waterfront camp sites.

In 1955, it was designated as a trailer park. The 58 mobile home

coaches there today, two of which are now unoccupied, first fell under a

lease in 1973. Last year, the city earned about $600,000 in rents from

the property.

“The issue cuts both ways,” City Councilman Steve Bromberg said. “The

residents are fighting for where they live and I can understand that. But

at the same time, they knew what they were getting into.”

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

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