Parkland use awaits committee

Alicia Robinson

A committee of up to 14 members, five of them from the public, will

look at the logistics of putting a park, a marina or some other

development at the Marinapark site.

The Newport Beach City Council voted Tuesday to form an ad hoc

committee to explore what the community would like to see at

Marinapark, a 9.8-acre piece of city-owned land occupied by a mobile

home park, Girl Scout house, American Legion post and some public

facilities.

Voters in November rejected a plan to rezone the property for a

luxury hotel.

The council will name the committee’s members at a Jan. 25

meeting. The committee will likely include Mayor Steve Bromberg and

Councilmen Tod Ridgeway and Don Webb as well as members of the city’s

commissions.

While the committee will gather public input and information on

possible uses for the Marinapark property, it won’t make a

recommendation to the council. The council members on the committee

also will look into procedures for closing the mobile home park on

the site.

While most council members agree the mobile home park will

eventually be closed, they won’t aggressively push to close it

immediately.

Councilman John Heffernan and Webb said the planning process for

Marinapark’s future will be hampered unless the council makes a firm

commitment to closing the mobile home park, and they wanted to put it

in writing.

“A public use is not a mobile home tenant use,” Heffernan said.

“I think having the tenants there is giving them an exclusive

right to sit on a $20-million piece of property that we all own.”

But five of his colleagues disagreed, choosing not to add language

about closing the mobile home park to the resolution that created the

ad hoc committee.

They preferred to let the committee bring them information on the

options first.

“There’s a rush to judgment here,” Ridgeway said. “Why not let the

process unfold as it’s presented to us?”

Bromberg’s main concern is that the caustic rhetoric of the

campaign for Measure L -- the property zoning change for the hotel --

will creep into the planning process for Marinapark’s future.

“My sense is that if this committee is to succeed, it has to be

done in a most professional manner,” he said.