Sign doesn’t fit to a T

June Casagrande

To get to the Marriott Newport Coast Villas, take Newport Coast Drive

north from Coast Highway and then hang a right onto Marriot.

But don’t slow down too much as you take the turn, because if you

do, you might notice something funny. It’s something you also might

have caught in the paragraph above. And it’s something that a lot of

others have caught already: The street name is misspelled.

The hotel chain is spelled with two Ts; however, the road,

according to the sign, has only one.

Could it be, by some weird twist, that the sign is actually

correct? Perhaps in honor of someone whose name just happened to be

one letter off from that of the hotel?

Nope.

Marriot is a service road, just north of Pelican Hill Road South,

that leads only to the Marriott Villas. It was built by and for the

Marriott. The road’s full name is just Marriot, with no “Drive,”

“Avenue” or “Street” after it.

“That sign’s gotten a fair amount of attention,” said Rich

Edmonston, Transportation and Development Services manager for the

city of Newport Beach. “We’ve had about a half a dozen people call us

and tell us it was misspelled.”

The mistake is actually repeated in four places: four small green

road signs attached to the signal at the large intersection that

alert drivers coming from both directions. The signs went up about

two weeks ago, but the mistake dates back much earlier.

The typo first showed up in some planning documents written by a

contractor working for the Marriott, Edmonston said. The plans were

filed with the county before Newport Coast was annexed to the city.

Then, after the annexation took place, the plans were also filed with

Newport Beach.

“We failed to catch the typo, too,” Edmonston said.

But because it’s not a city project, taxpayers won’t be the ones

to pick up the cost of fixing the error. Marriott managers overseeing

construction work at the site could not be reached Friday, but

Edmonston said he suspects that the company will want to take out the

signs and replace them with correctly spelled versions.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

june.casagrande@latimes.com.