Council’s study will be careful

As reported in this newspaper, the City Council voted, 5-1, to

proceed with added consultant work on all planning options proposed

by Griffin Holdings at its Aug. 23 meeting.

Griffin Holdings and its principal, Roger Torierro, are working

under a consulting agreement with the city to prepare preliminary

planning options and related costs for a replacement city hall

facility (a new city hall, a new, four-story parking structure, and a

replacement fire station) on the peninsula.

What the council voted on at the Aug. 23 meeting was that the

consultant would prepare added planning details and more specific

cost estimates for each of the six or so planning and design options

that have resulted in the past few months from their prior consultant

refinement work on the project and also as the result of input and

much new project detail provided by city staff, from our residents

and also from separate members of the City Council. That added work

by the consultant is already part of their contract and fee, but it

will allow the City Council and, importantly, also our residents, to

more fully assess each of those options and then also the entire

proposed project, its related cost and the method proposed by the

City Council for payment of that cost.

By that Aug. 23 vote, the City Council did not approve (nor even

endorse) either the baseline project (which was initially proposed by

the consultant), nor any of those newer options, nor the cost of any

of item. The council only backed that the consultant provide much

more needed planning and cost detail about the entire project and

each of these newer options.

The City Council’s final decision of the design, layout and cost

of the project will occur in the future -- after more planning work

and resulting detail comes back from the consultant, and after review

and assessment of that work occurs from many sources, including our

residents and also City Council members, each of whom presently has

open and unresolved issues regarding this (pending and possible)

project.

Those concerns will be solved before any binding decision is made.

* JOHN HEFFERNAN is the mayor of Newport Beach.