We are assured of bitter battles over Marinapark

A year ago, a proposed resort for the Marinapark site on Balboa Peninsula went before voters, who adamantly denied the plan by voting it down 67% to 33%.

Now, the developer of the plan, Stephen Sutherland, wants another chance. He’s filed a claim against the city of Newport Beach -- the required first step to suing the city, which he says he’s intent to do -- for $1 million and, more importantly he says, to get additional time to develop his resort, time that he believes is owed him.

And sometime during the 18 months he maintains he has, Sutherland says he will bring his resort plan back to a vote. “I think the best way to do this for the community is to have a vote and to have the residents decide based on facts, not on fallacy,” Sutherland told the Pilot.

That fallacy, Sutherland claims, skewed the debate about Measure L a year ago, setting up the vote as being for either a resort or a park at the site, the last city-owned harborfront property in Newport.

Sutherland makes a strong point. The rhetoric of the election -- one that was especially bitter in a political climate that quickly becomes shrill -- clearly pushed a park versus resort dichotomy, with opponents organizing as Protect Our Parks. Those anti-Sutherland forces also focused on personal, side issues that had little, at best, to do with the merits of the plan.

But in the months that have followed, development of a park at the site has turned out to be far from a certainty. Only one of the four main proposals going to the City Council, which has yet to set a date to talk about the next phase of Marinapark, can in any way be described as a park. (It is the one pitched by Protect Our Parks.) The others include small picnics areas or similar grassy spots, but they mainly are marinas of varying sizes. One even proposes turning the mobile homes into rental cottages, which sounds a lot like a another resort.

Now, none of this means Sutherland is correct in his claims or that, given another chance, voters will decide differently about his resort. Initial reaction suggests he has a daunting fight ahead to win support. And in the end, perhaps one of the new plans will prove popular with residents and with the City Council.

That future is quite unclear. What isn’t, however, is that before we find out what Marinapark will become, we are assured of more nasty debate, both among those making the new proposals and because of Sutherland’s pending lawsuit. Such debate will only haltingly move the city toward a final decision, if it leads there at all.

Such debate, it seems, is the unfortunate, continuing legacy of Marinapark.