Friends want to reintroduce themselves

Paul Clinton

After several years of dormancy, a once-influential environmental

outfit is regrouping to return to the front lines of battlefield

environmentalism.

To match its new posture, the group is changing its name.

Members of the Friends of the Irvine Coast, a Corona del Mar group

that won two landmark legal victories against the Irvine Co. in the

1980s and ‘90s, are expected to change the group’s name to Friends of

the Newport Coast at a meeting today.

The change should clear up confusion about an area that hasn’t

existed since the mid-1990s, when the Irvine Co. itself renamed the

more than 9,000 acres of coastline that stretch the seven miles

between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar.

“Over the years, it’s been more and more awkward, because people

don’t know who you are,” said Fern Pirkle, the group’s founder and

current president. “Irvine doesn’t have a coast.”

The group, which counts about 1,000 members, has also started to

question the state’s plans for the 46 historic cottages at Crystal

Cove State Park.

The land known as the “Irvine Coast” was named after the Irvine

family, which began buying up land in the late 19th Century. The

family eventually named its holdings the Irvine Ranch.

As the privately-held Irvine Co., now run by reclusive billionaire

Donald Bren, began to propose housing communities for the coastal

strip in the late 1970s, environmentalists beat the bushes to halt

the development.

Pirkle and a band of about a dozen locals began circulating

mailers to build support for forcing the Irvine Co. to scale back its

plans.

Pirkle rounded up a few friends and formed the group in 1976. The

first order of business: force the Irvine Co. to sell the coastline

to the state.

The group, which grew fairly quickly, led a local groundswell that

successfully lobbied the state for its cause. In 1979, the state’s

Department of Parks and Recreation paid $32.6 million for what is now

Crystal Cove State Park.

With the coastline off limits to condos and other housing, the

group turned its attention to the rolling hills on the land side of

Pacific Coast Highway.

In 1981, the group sued the Irvine Co. to stop it from building

12,000 dwellings for 38,000 residents, as well as three office

towers. In a 1984 settlement with the group, the company agreed to

eliminate the towers and reduce the housing to 2,600 dwellings for

8,000 people.

“People told us we were crazy,” Pirkle said. “We had to raise

$100,000 to pay for the lawsuit, so I had a lot of sleepless nights.”

The group sued again, in 1996, when the Irvine Co. announced plans

to amend the earlier agreement to expand its development efforts.

That year, the company changed the name of the land from Irvine Coast

to Newport Coast.

A year later, in a second settlement, the company agreed to

abandon that expansion and dedicate 70 acres of land as open space.

At the meeting today, group members will also air their views

about the state’s plans to turn 31 of the 46 Crystal Cove cottages

over to the public as overnight rentals.

Pirkle has criticized the state for holding more than seven

cottages for use by lifeguards and rangers.

“We feel the number the state should use should be minimized,”

Pirkle said. “The number the public should use should be maximized.”