Residents want facility’s funds shifted

Bureaucratic delays and soaring construction costs have killed plans for a community center in Santa Ana Heights, so now some residents want the $11.5 million for that project to go elsewhere in the community.

Where officials decide to put the money may foretell the future of Santa Ana Heights’ $40 million redevelopment agency, a fund to remove blight that one county supervisor has said he wants to close down as soon as possible.

The community center was to be a collaboration between the city of Newport Beach and the YMCA. The city planned to buy the YMCA facility at 2300 University Ave., build a new, bigger center there and let the YMCA operate it.

But a number of things happened to interfere with that plan.

No one was able to agree on how big to make the facility or the swimming pool it was intended to have, Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said. That led to delays, which didn’t help when construction costs were already on the rise.

“Every month that went by was a period of time where costs kept escalating,” Kiff said. “Every new estimate we did would expand.”

To pay for the facility, $11.5 million was allotted from the county-controlled redevelopment agency, which has about $40 million in Santa Ana Heights residents’ property taxes that were set aside. The city would oversee the project, paying the YMCA $4 million for the land and spending $7.5 million to build the new center.

By mid-2005 that wasn’t enough, but city officials tried to move ahead anyway, thinking they could get more money from the redevelopment agency.

This fall, after land values rose and more members joined the YMCA at the University Avenue facility, YMCA officials decided not to sell the city the land.

“It just got too tied up, and we had been working on it for quite a long time and construction costs were going up,” Central Orange Coast YMCA Executive Director Jon Voget said. “We just kind of felt it’d be best if we moved forward on our own at this time.”

Meanwhile, city officials had been talking with the county about taking over the redevelopment agency, but that never came to fruition. The November election put a lot of Newport Beach City Council decisions on hold as well.

Last week, the board of the Santa Ana Heights Project Advisory Committee, a group that represents residents to city and county officials, voted to tell the county the community center money should go to other projects in the area, such as a horse-riding arena, a utility line burial project and street repairs.

They’re worried that otherwise the money will go back into the redevelopment fund and they may never see it because county officials may consider closing down the redevelopment agency.

“What we are doing is looking forward to saving our redevelopment agency,” said Barbara Venezia, who chairs the project advisory committee. “This neighborhood is impacted by [John Wayne] airport, that money belongs to this community and those projects need to be done.”

A report to county supervisors in October suggested 2013 would be the earliest the agency could be closed and its debts repaid.

Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby has said he’s interested in closing down all the county’s redevelopment agencies. Norby couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, but he said in an October interview that he thinks Santa Ana Heights is no longer blighted.

“That neighborhood is one of the most expensive, one of the most prestigious, one of the most desired neighborhoods in the city, so I think the agency has served its purpose,” he said.

Newport officials may back the project advisory committee’s request to shift the funds because they expect to ask for some themselves.

Kiff said $4.1 million from the agency is supposed to pay for a new fire station in Santa Ana Heights. The city is fronting the money for the $12 million project, and “we will be fairly aggressive in asking for that,” he said.

Some city and county officials, including Newport Beach’s newly elected Supervisor John Moorlach, are still gathering information before deciding what to do about the redevelopment funds and the agency itself.

“I’m not an advocate either way,” Moorlach said. “My advocacy would be to protect the residents of Santa Ana Heights, and if that money was segregated for their improvements, then we should honor that commitment.”

Although project advisory committee members have moved beyond the community center, some city officials and Voget at the YMCA said it could still happen. But it likely would hinge on the larger issue of what will happen to the redevelopment funds over the long term.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a dead issue,” Newport beach City Councilwoman Leslie Daigle said. “It’s not something that’s being actively looked at.”