Council may take new look at City Hall

With a storm brewing over whether a designated park site should be used for a new city hall, Newport Beach City Council members tonight may again postpone a decision on City Hall’s location to allow more discussion.

The council’s agenda suggests only discussion of the existing City Hall site, but several council members said they want a closer look at architect Bill Ficker’s plan to build a city hall on a planned park site next to the main library on Avocado Avenue.

City Council members have been considering replacing the aged and crowded City Hall on the Balboa Peninsula since April 2005. After community members complained that the council hadn’t adequately considered other sites, council members named a committee that looked at 22 potential sites.

The 12-acre park site was removed from consideration in December because a development agreement with the Irvine Co. committed it as open space.

Soon after the choices were narrowed down to two, one was taken off the table because its owner ? the Irvine Co. ? refused to sell. The council’s building committee has suggested moving ahead on the existing Newport Boulevard site and spending $25,000 on a new building design.

But some council members ? including two of the three on the building committee ? said Monday that Ficker’s proposal deserves more consideration.

“I intend to ask that the [city hall] item be continued and that it be brought back at a study session that will allow both sides to make their pitch one way or the other,” Mayor Don Webb said. He, Selich and Councilman Tod Ridgeway make up the building committee.

Selich and Councilmen Dick Nichols and Steve Rosansky said they would at least like to consider the proposal, although Rosansky and Selich had caveats.

Councilman Keith Curry and Councilwoman Leslie Daigle declined to comment on the proposal Monday. Ridgeway could not be reached for comment, but he has been a strong backer of the existing City Hall site, which is in his district.

Selich said the majority of e-mails he’s gotten are in favor of the park.

In reply to a question about Ficker’s proposal, the Daily Pilot had received 60 comments in favor of his proposal, compared with 14 against it, as of Monday afternoon.

Ficker has estimated his plan would cost $27.5 million for a one-story city hall and 220-space parking structure. Among the proposal’s supporters is Lucille Kuehn, who in the early 1990s pushed to have the main library built and the adjacent site reserved as a park.

“We have rational information that this could be a good city hall site and there would still be park [space], and it would be adjacent to the library and enhance the library,” she said.

But opposition will likely be fierce from park supporters who have waited for years to see a park built and watched a promised $1.2-million donation dwindle because of the delay.

City Parks Commissioner Debra Allen said the park ? named Newport Center Park ? has been designed and officials are probably just six weeks away from bidding out contracts to build it.

“If you put Mr. Ficker’s city hall in the middle of the park, what you’d have is the library, a two-story parking structure, an office building and a bunch of gullies that nobody would want to go visit or have any reason to visit, so it totally destroys the idea of the park,” she said.

City Manager Homer Bludau said the city would likely need permission from the Irvine Co. to use the park site for another purpose, but that would be the main obstacle.

While plans for a city hall at the existing site were estimated at $48 million, Ficker pitched his proposal as free, but some council members disputed that.

“His proposal completely eliminates the obligation that we would have to replace the parkland somewhere else,” Selich said. “I don’t know that there’s a great cost savings in doing this.”

Rosansky said even though he supports looking at the park site for a city hall, he expects to find enough limitations to put the council back where it started ? on Newport Boulevard.

“That’s probably going to be the result is that we spend more time studying a proposal that sounds great on its face but doesn’t really meet our needs,” he said.