Expansion begets expansion

Monica Mazur

A few years back, a neighbor wanted an encroachment permit to enlarge

his garage from a two-car to a three-car garage to within 3 feet of

the fence line. The family’s needs had changed. Their child had a

car, and they wanted to park it in the garage. One household objected

to the city of Newport Beach, and the encroachment permit was denied.

After a few years, the child went away to college and took the car

with him. Once again, the family’s needs had changed. The garage

expansion was unnecessary since the original need for the three-car

garage changed.

About 20 years ago, St. Andrew’s Church wanted to expand because

its needs had changed. With much opposition from the Cliffhaven and

Newport Heights neighborhood, the expansion proceeded. Being the

“good-neighbor” church, it said this expansion satisfied its needs

and wouldn’t request another expansion.

Since that time, the parking and traffic problems in Cliffhaven

and Newport Heights have escalated, not only due to the original

church expansion, but also from Newport Harbor High School, cars

cutting through the neighborhood and more cars owned by residents.

This has been enough of a problem that the neighborhood and the city

have held multiple meetings, and the city is potentially going to

spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install various devices --

such as traffic circles, bulges, new striping -- in an attempt to

alleviate the traffic issues.

Now the church’s needs have apparently changed again. Not living

up to its word from 20 years ago and waving the “for the youth” flag,

it proposed a 35,948-square-foot (which has been reduced to 21,714

square feet) expansion with an underground parking garage. Hundreds

of residents of Cliffhaven and Newport Heights are horrified. Instead

of the church working with the residents to alleviate the existing

parking and traffic conditions, they want to add to them? Three of

the concessions the church says it would make for the neighborhood to

discourage traffic and parking in the Cliffhaven and Newport Heights

streets in order to push the expansion are:

* to close the Clay Street driveway to the existing church

parking lot;

* to build a solid wall around the parking lot; and

* to work with the high school to move the maintenance buildings

and re-stripe the parking lot to accommodate more cars for church and

school parking.

In the spirit of being a good-neighbor church, one would think

that at least the Clay Street driveway and block wall options should

have been put in effect long ago instead of being a bargaining chip

for the new church expansion.

The church’s request isn’t just an encroachment permit of a few

feet on one small property; it is a Newport Beach general-plan

amendment change, zone change and use-permit change! It isn’t a

project that will take a couple of months of building; it will be

years of building with the accompanying disruption and inconvenience

of noise, dust, dirt, parking and traffic, especially large

dirt-hauling trucks. And the end result will involve neighborhood

residents living with the increased traffic, huge structures and

ever-increasing and changing use of the church facilities.

The church has not provided a “needs assessment” for this project

to the city or to the neighborhood working group. If there is an

overwhelming need for a project of this size to address the church’s

outreach requirements into the rest of Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and

Irvine, it is no longer a “neighborhood church.” This is not the only

church in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. Many others provide outreach

to the community and after-school student needs. It is time for St.

Andrew’s to move to an area where it can spread out to accommodate

its community needs, or to reassess its needs to fit the neighborhood

location without an expansion.

I am a 26-year resident to the neighborhood and am very much aware

of the church and high school down the street. What is needed is for

the city of Newport Beach to have the church live up to the

regulations, goals, policies and procedures the city has in place to

protect the Cliffhaven and Newport Heights residents from the

unwelcome and unnecessary church expansion. This expansion request is

inconsistent with a residentially zoned neighborhood.

It took only one neighbor to object to an encroachment permit

request to have it denied. In the church’s case, hundreds of

neighbors are objecting to a general-plan amendment change, zone

change and use-permit change! What is this saying? And when will the

needs of the church change again?

Bigger is not always better. Please, no expansion!

* MONICA MAZUR is a Cliffhaven resident.