Measure V shuffles housing allotments

While the races for six Newport Beach City Council seats on the fall ballot may be sexier than a plan for the city’s development, that plan is no less important to the city’s future. Voters will decide Nov. 7 whether to support or reject Measure V, the first major update to the city’s general plan since 1988.

The updated general plan would act as the blueprint for all kinds of development in Newport Beach through 2025. This is the second in a series of stories exploring big questions about the new general plan and how it would affect the city.

General plan supporters and opponents argue about whether the plan would reduce or increase daily car trips and total square footage of buildings, but one area where they can agree — sort of — is housing units.

A 2005 city figure pegs the number of homes at 42,143 units. The existing general plan allows a total of 48,819 units, and the new plan boosts that number to 49,968 — an increase of 1,149 units.

An increase citywide, anyway. Under the updated general plan, parts of Newport Beach would lose housing. Others would gain.

The biggest decrease was in the Banning Ranch area, where the allowance for future housing fell by 1,375 units. Banning Ranch now is a largely undeveloped property that city officials and environmentalists hope will be preserved as open space, but in case it’s developed the city has cut back how many homes could be built.

The most new housing units were penciled into the airport area, where as many as 2,200 units could be built under the new plan. But to offset the addition, the City Council stipulated that 1,650 of those units could only be built if they replace office or commercial space that’s allowed or already built.

The added housing is the reason the plan is on the ballot. Normally, the council decides on changes to the general plan. But the successful 2000 ballot initiative known as Greenlight — formally called Measure S — requires voter approval to add more than 100 housing units, 40,000 square feet of building space or 100 peak-hour car trips.

City Councilman Steve Rosansky, who is part of the pro-Measure V campaign, said that although the plan adds housing units, it decreases the amount of commercial and industrial space allowed in the city.

“If you talk to people in town, they want Newport Beach to remain a residential community,” he said.

Allowing residential units instead of other kinds of development gives property owners an incentive to get rid of office and industrial facilities, he added.

Taking away the entitlement to build is taking away people’s property rights, Rosansky said, and it’s tough to do that.

When the council earlier this year discussed reducing the number of residential units allowed in certain areas of the city from two units to one, a crowd of angry residents protested and the council left the entitlements in the new plan.

Asst. City Manager Sharon Wood said that even with the additional housing, the density of development won’t dramatically change in 90% of the city. The plan also includes a policy to prevent subdividing properties in existing residential neighborhoods, so densities won’t be increased there, she said.

But Greenlight residents group spokesman Phil Arst called Wood’s assessment “baloney.” He has criticized city officials for claiming the new plan reduces traffic, when it actually allows less traffic than the current plan but more than exists today. Any claims that the plan will reduce development are “the same shell game that they used for traffic compared to the current general plan,” Arst said.

To Arst, some development is fine as long as it’s slow and moderate, but there’s a point at which residents should get a say — and that’s at the voting thresholds set forth in Measure S.