Greenlight II gets changes

Three major tweaks made to growth-control ballot measure planned for 2006 election.Proponents of a ballot measure that would provide more public control over development in Newport Beach have rewritten the proposal to make it more palatable to voters and more likely to stand up to legal scrutiny.

Signatures in support of the new proposal will be collected by the Greenlight group that in 2000 successfully backed a growth-control measure that bears its name.

Measure S -- known as the Greenlight law -- requires a public vote if a development project exceeds what the city’s general plan allows by any of three thresholds: 100 dwelling units, 100 peak hour car trips, or 40,000 square feet of building space.

The latest initiative, dubbed Greenlight II, starts the threshold for a public vote at existing development, instead of what’s allowed in the general plan but not yet built.

In late September the group announced it would circulate petitions to put Greenlight II on the November 2006 ballot. Last week Greenlight spokesman Phil Arst said some changes have been made to the measure.

The three major changes would:

* Require the city and project developers to create a specific plan for any major development. Currently, specific plans are drawn up for a neighborhood or an area of the city, but not for a single project on one piece of property. The measure also would require more data on a project’s traffic effects to be collected and given to the public.

* Exempt some public projects from the public vote requirement, including hospitals, schools and public utilities. ‘We don’t want to waste the public’s time on a vote we know they’ll approve. Those are meritorious developments,” Arst said.

* Avoid a possible legal challenge by exempting Newport Coast from Greenlight controls until the area is built out. An annexation agreement between the city and Orange County puts county officials in control of planning and zoning in Newport Coast.

Arst said the Greenlight law has worked well, but the existing general plan should be subject to more voter controls.

City officials are in the middle of an update to the general plan, which could appear on the November 2006 ballot.

“We all want to see some moderate growth of the city, but we’re scared to death of what the very large developments will do to the circulation element and to our property rights and our property values,” Arst said.

He doesn’t believe Measure S has stifled growth in Newport Beach, but not everyone agrees.

A public vote in 2001 killed an office tower that developer Tim Strader planned to build at the Koll Center near John Wayne Airport. Strader believes the specter of such a vote will prevent any major developers from making proposals to the city.

Most developers aren’t prepared to invest the time and money into getting a project through the planning commission and City Council, only to face the uncertainty of a citywide vote, Strader said.

The planning commission and council unanimously approved Strader’s project, a 10-story office building and a parking structure that would have added 250,000 square feet. But 59.5% of voters disagreed.

“You’re looking at about a million dollars worth of lost money, so people aren’t willing to take that risk,” Strader said.

Greenlight II would exacerbate that problem, to the point that the city’s older developments won’t get upgraded, said City Councilman Tod Ridgeway, a developer and Greenlight opponent.

“My general attitude on a lot of projects is I’d rather improve what’s there than deny the project,” he said. “We have a lot of older buildings that certainly will not be rehabbed or rebuilt if Greenlight II occurs.”