Greenlight trigger: square feet or room count?

June Casagrande

It will never win any awards for excitement or clarity. But there is

no getting around the importance of the city’s general plan.

For any developer wanting to build here, the general plan is the

reigning authority. The document, which city staffers describe as

unusually specific compared to other cities’, contains detailed

guidelines for building and other activities throughout Newport

Beach.

In most cases, everything boils down to square footage. For

example, in the case of the Koll Center in the airport area, the

general plan specifies that the building can add 15,000 square feet

of retail and restaurant space to its facilities. New projects work

similarly: The general plan contains rules -- sometimes vague,

sometimes detailed -- on what types of buildings can go in and how

big they can be.

But hotels are different. The general plan doesn’t weigh them the

same way. Over the years, the city’s practice has been to count the

number of hotel rooms, not the square footage. The practice comes

from the Manual of Institute of Transportation Engineers -- a

reference guide for measuring how development will affect traffic.

The logic is that, for hotels, rooms are a better guide than square

footage for understanding how much traffic to expect: a

1,000-square-foot hotel room with a king bed isn’t likely to have

more occupants than a 400-square-foot hotel room with a king bed.

Chances are, the number of car trips generated will be the same.

The formula has worked well, and it’s been heavily relied upon.

Most of the newer hotels and recent hotel expansions in the city took

place in areas where the general plan did not have preset guidelines

for hotels. The Marriott, the Four Seasons, the Hyatt and Extended

Stay America are just some of the hotels that have requested general

plan amendments in recent years to expand or build new hotels.

That was before Greenlight.

The voter-approved Measure S, nicknamed Greenlight, requires that

projects that significantly exceed general plan guidelines go to a

vote of the people. If a project is 40,000 square feet larger than

the general plan would normally permit, if it would add 100 more

homes or 100 more peak-hour car trips than the general plan would

permit, then the matter must be decided at the ballot box.

A SECOND TEST

The formula worked as planned in the case of the Koll Center. When

Koll executive Tim Strader sought to add 250,000 square feet of

office space, he triggered Greenlight, and in 2001 voters said no to

his request.

But now, as the Marinapark resort project is gearing up on the

Balboa Peninsula, the city’s second test of Greenlight is a lot like

starting over. The rules are very different.

“Marinapark is unique in a number of ways, including the fact that

it’s on city-owned land,” Assistant City Manager Sharon Wood said.

The 110-room luxury resort is slated for land that is now occupied

by mobile homes and that the general plan specifies as open space.

Because it’s the first hotel project to come up for consideration

since Greenlight was passed, Greenlight leaders believe it will set

an important precedent. That, in part, is why they want to revisit

the issue of how the city measures hotels.

When the city and Greenlight leaders were laying down guidelines

for Greenlight, the question of how to measure hotels got tricky.

After a number of public meetings ending in March 2001, officials

left the table with the idea that, if a hotel wasn’t expected to

generate more than 100 peak-hour car trips, then Greenlight would not

be triggered. Instead, the city would do what it has always done:

consider hotels based on the number of rooms and other factors

without sending the matter to a Greenlight vote.

Though City Council members last year agreed to send the

Marinapark project to a vote, they stated they were sending it to a

vote because they believed that was the best way to decide the

matter, not because they believed that Greenlight applied.

The 110-room resort project has 100,507 square feet of floor area.

Therefore, it would trigger a Greenlight vote if square footage was

used as a guide.

GENTLEMEN’S GUIDELINES

Greenlight leaders now question the city’s conclusions. They say

that, from the beginning, the Greenlight movement members made it

clear that they were worried about hotels’ effects on traffic, as

well as the effects of office and housing developments. Two weeks

ago, they threatened to sue the city to overturn its ruling that the

Marinapark project did not require a Greenlight vote.

“It sets a precedent for them to get around Greenlight on hotels,”

Greenlight spokesman Phil Arst said.

Now, city officials say they might reconsider the city’s position.

Mayor Tod Ridgeway said last week that the guidelines laid out in

2001 were subject to a “gentlemen’s agreement” -- activists and

officials could revisit the guidelines if they were unhappy with

them.

“As public officials, it’s important to honor a gentlemen’s

agreement like that,” Ridgeway said. “It’s about credibility.”

The city and the developer have been planning to put the

Marinapark project on the November ballot. But, now that the

Greenlight guidelines are in flux and a lawsuit threat still looms,

the future is harder than ever to predict.

* 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.