City will consider park site for hall

NEWPORT BEACH ? At the risk of angering parks supporters, the City Council unanimously voted late Tuesday to give more consideration to building a city hall on a plot slated for open space.

Three council members wanted to move forward with replacing City Hall at its current Newport Boulevard site, but that motion failed.

The others wanted to hear more about architect Bill Ficker’s proposal to sell the existing site and build a new facility on land that is set to become Newport Center Park.

“I think we do owe it to the people to have this analysis and have it in a public forum so our decision will be transparent,” Councilman Keith Curry said.

Ficker and parks supporters will make their pitch at a July 11 council study session.

The council will discuss a comparison of the two possible sites at its July 25 meeting.

Since Ficker brought his proposal forward, some residents have said putting city hall by the library makes sense because it’s a more central location than the existing Balboa Peninsula site.

But it has its own obstacles.

For one, parks supporters are angry because the site has been promised as a park for at least a decade. The land use was stipulated in a development agreement with the Irvine Co., so the city would have to get the company’s permission to use it for a city hall.

Councilman Ed Selich, along with Councilmen Tod Ridgeway and Steve Rosansky, proposed voting to rebuild on the current site. Selich reminded the council that the site wasn’t considered earlier because it was promised to be a park.

“It’s a policy matter for this council to decide,” Selich said. “Do we want to trade a central location for a park?”

Stopping to consider the park site for city hall also means yet another delay in the project, so costs will climb.

“Given that construction costs have increased almost monthly for the last two-and-a-half to three years, the longer that we take in making a decision, the more a city hall facility is going to cost us,” City Manager Homer Bludau said Monday.

Rebuilding at the current site was expected to cost at least $48 million, which would likely swell to $100 million or more with the cost of borrowing.

It would also require city workers to be relocated while a new building is constructed.

A council-appointed committee considered 22 sites and eliminated most because the city didn’t own them.

The council in 2005 took the park site near the Avocado Avenue library off the table because a development agreement designated it as open space, and a private donor had pledged $1.2 million to develop it.

At Tuesday’s meeting, a few council members and residents criticized the Daily Pilot for its recent coverage of the issue, saying the paper encouraged a controversy by its coverage of the issue.dpt.28-cityhallrenderin-CPhotoInfo5J1SDLI720060628ihowptkn(LA)A rendering from 2005 shows part of the plan for a park near Newport’s Central Library. The council will now consider that site for a new city hall.