Banning Ranch and Marinapark deserve preservation

Tom Billings

Enough is enough. Developers and our Newport Beach city officials

continue to push for projects to lay more concrete and commercial

development on our city’s last bastion of open space and parklands. I

am speaking of the wonderful open space in Banning Ranch along the

Santa River and the designated parkland known as Marinapark on the

Balboa Peninsula. As a longtime resident of Newport Beach, I can

attest to the overbuilding that has taken place over the past three

decades. The city has basically run out of commercially zoned space

and now continues to make attempts to build on these open areas. In

the case of Banning Ranch, it’s low income housing, and for

Marinapark, it’s a 110-room resort the size of the Balboa Bay Club.

The Orange Coast River Park and Friends of Harbors, Beaches and

Parks have developed a sound plan to preserve and manage a four-mile,

1,000-acre wilderness area along the Santa Ana River. The Banning

Ranch natural habitat and its connecting trails would be a wonderful

addition to the park and the Orange Coast River Park is working

diligently with the Sierra Club Banning Ranch Park and Preserve Task

Force to explore ways to make it happen.

Our neighbor, the Laguna Canyon Wilderness Foundation, is an

excellent example of what can be accomplished. They successfully

preserved 17,000 acres of wilderness area that stretches from above

Crystal Cove through the Laguna Canyon hills by partnering among

community and environmental activists, civic and municipal leaders,

and private property owners and developers. They all worked together

to keep it wild forever for the public to enjoy and we must do the

same here in Newport Beach.

For Marinapark on Balboa Peninsula, we will all get the

opportunity to vote in the November 2004 election. My vote says no to

building another monstrosity like the new 125-room Balboa Bay Club

resort. With multiple four- and five-star resort hotels already built

out in Newport and Huntington Beach, why the call for another? I vote

no to more traffic, no to less public parking and no to limited

access to our beaches. Anyone who sits in traffic on the stretch of

West Coast Highway where the new Bay Club now stands knows what I am

talking about and the huge impact a similar project would have on

peninsula traffic. And I vote no to taking away public parkland that

our city charter has designated as open and recreational space.

Instead of thinking of the enrichment of a few now, let’s preserve

the last of our open spaces for our residents, visitors and for our

children, grandchildren and future generations. Once these wilderness

and parklands are gone, they are gone forever.

* TOM BILLINGS is a steering committee member at Orange Coast

River Park.