Is Marinapark a park or marina?

Alicia Robinson

Whatever Newport Beach City Council members decide to do with the

Marinapark property, they may not have to change the name.

As a committee of residents and council members sorts out

possible uses for the waterfront parcel, two basic alternatives are

emerging, and neither is a big surprise: a marina or a park.

Protect Our Parks, the citizens’ group formed to fight a luxury

hotel proposal for Marinapark, today will unveil its idea for how the

9.8-acre piece of land could accommodate a new Girl Scout center,

dinghy storage docks, a small-craft launching area, a large lawn and

other facilities.

A major element of the site would be an aquatic center and boat

house that could be used by the city’s recreational sailing programs,

the Girl Scouts and local high schools.

The plan retains tennis courts and basketball half-courts that are

on the site now. The middle of the parcel would become an open lawn,

with a treed picnic area and playground at the western end.

The two key points of the plan are that it’s open to the whole

community -- not just boaters -- and that the design gives residents

and passersby a view of the water, Protect Our Parks spokesman Joe

O’Hora said.

“The purpose here really was to get an open shot at the bay,” he

said. “What we’re trying to do is preserve an access here for anybody

who wants an access.”

Protect Our Parks may have a tough crowd at the meeting. Mark

Silvey, who heads the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce marine

committee, planned to marshal support for his own Marinapark plan at

a meeting early this morning and bring backers to the ad hoc

committee meeting this afternoon.

Silvey presented his plan to the ad hoc committee last month. Its

focal point is 46 boat slips, most of which would serve boats that

are at least 50 feet long. The plan also includes a community

building with space for the Girl Scouts, an 800-foot public dock and

a service dock with a crane.

Slips for 50-foot boats are nearly nonexistent in Newport. The

city could make money from the slip rental -- Silvey estimates $1.5

million a year -- and boaters who tie up there would spend money in

Newport’s restaurants and stores, he said.

“You put in a park there, you’ll get none of that,” he said. “What

you’ll get is the city paying for trash pickup, the city getting

complaints about noise.”

Silvey and Protect Our Parks members agree on a few things: Both

plans give the Girl Scouts a new facility, both offer space to

hand-launch small boats, and both could include the Newport Harbor

Nautical Museum, which needs to relocate.

They also all want to increase access to the harbor, a precious

public resource for the city. But they disagree about who it is

Marinapark should be serving.

Despite the boating industry’s importance to the city, it has been

losing ground for years, Silvey said. A marina with slips for the

underserved larger boats would be a much-needed shot in the arm, he

said.

But to O’Hora, digging out the middle of the site to create boat

slips would go against what voters chose when they rejected the hotel

plan in November.

“We think it’s short-sighted, narrow-minded and somewhat elitist,

given that there are people who expected to see this as a park, not a

bastion for 40 or 50 yacht owners,” O’Hora said.

“Using a site like this for a boatyard after all the other

boatyards in the harbor have failed is madness,” he said. “It’s

flying in the face of reality.”

The ad hoc committee is likely to wrap up its work in August, said

Councilman Tod Ridgeway. It will give the council a summary of the

input it gathered, but not a recommendation.

“Most of the presentations have centered around kind of the same

concept, which is kind of a mixed use, open-space plan,” he said.

The council voted last week to begin procedures for closing the

mobile home park at Marinapark, which will take at least a year and

half. Once the ad hoc committee finishes its work, the council will

hear presentations from people who want to give them and then decide

how the property should be used.