Residents who know about Regent plan will support it

Stephen R. Sutherland

Tom Billings once again tries to mislead residents when he states

that the Regent Newport Beach Resort, planned for the Marina Mobile

Home Park site on the Balboa Peninsula, is the same size of the

Balboa Bay Club. In fact, the Regent will total 100,507 square feet.

This includes the new Girl Scout house and the new Community Center

that will be built on the site. The Regent will be one- and two-story

villa style buildings that will not exceed the height of many of the

homes in the area and most of the villas will be lower than

surrounding homes.

The new and improved Bay Club is three stories high and close to

250,000 square feet in size. If you add the Bay Club apartments, you

grow to five stories and well more than 600,000 square feet. In fact,

the Regent is not the same size as the Bay Club, as Billings claims;

it is six times smaller.

Residents of Newport Beach have the right to support or oppose the

Regent or any other project. Residents also have the right to be told

the truth, but it seems Billings does not respect that right.

Billings has been a member of the Greenlight Steering Committee.

The leader of the committee has said in the past that a good project

is one that is low rise, low density, low in traffic generation,

benefits residents and generates revenue to the city. The Regent

meets each and every one of those criteria. In fact, the traffic

generation is so low, the Regent does not even trigger a Greenlight

vote.

The Regent benefits residents in many ways. The project includes a

new Girl Scout House, new Community Center, new public tennis courts,

a major remodel of the American Legion Post 291 for our veterans, and

improved water quality for the harbor. All of this without a dime out

of residents pockets. A vote of residents will take place in November

of 2004, not because of Greenlight, but because the leaders of this

fine city and I agreed that residents should decide a project of this

importance.

Greenlight leaders have stated in the past that they have not

taken a position on the Regent Resort. Greenlight leader Phil Arst

wrote a letter to the City Council asking the council to promote

hotel development in the city. In his letter he states, “the city

should encourage retail and hotel development.” Even with this,

residents should not be surprised if Greenlight finds some reason to

oppose the Resort.

Residents that have driven through this part of the peninsula know

that this is currently one of the most run down parts of our city. It

is filled with bars, tattoo parlors, body piercing shops and rental

units.

The site, if made into a park as Billings wants, will be overrun

with day tourists that now fill the Newport Pier area (only 200 short

yards away) every summer day and leave nothing but trash behind when

they leave. Most residents who drive through the Newport Pier parking

lot during these periods will pray for a small luxury five-star

resort instead of a park that will serve as the overflow for the pier

crowd, bring more traffic, take up more parking and result only in

the leaving of even more trash when they leave. And all of that at

the cost of taxpayers throughout this city.

Is this what the majority of residents in Newport Beach really

want? My early polling of voters indicates that residents who know

that the Regent is a small luxury resort with the benefits to the

community that have already been stated support the resort by a

margin of 75%. The majority of those that opposed the resort in the

past changed their minds when the facts were presented to them.

Could this be the reason Billings attempts to mislead residents?

Residents should ask themselves, does Billings fear an informed and

educated population?

* STEPHEN R. SUTHERLAND is a partner in Regent Newport Beach.