City Trying to Throw Us a Curve

Tuesday night’s joint Newport Beach City Council/Planning Commission meeting had a verbal presentation of The Irvine Company’s plans for future development of Fashion Island and Newport Center.

Though some might disagree, on balance, The Irvine Company has been a good steward of the development and management at Newport Center. The problems in the presentation started only when it tried to explain the development of the city hall project.

A rule of thumb in business is that if something that shouldn’t be confusing is, someone is trying to confuse you.

That’s how I felt when I walked away after the presentation The Irvine Company (TIC) made for their “non-expansion” expansion of Fashion Island. The confusing part was not the adding of 420 high-rise condos or the 278,000 feet of office space to be built instead of the previously approved 195-room hotel.

It was trying to understand how a new 72,000-square-foot city hall, which needed three acres of land to be built anywhere else in town, now only needs a little more than an acre.

The lack of land needed seems to be explained in The Irvine Company’s statement: “ guarantee use of required parking spaces to exclusively serve the City Hall.” By using TIC’s parking structure, the city would not have to buy the additional land needed for parking.

Does that mean that The Irvine Company is going to pay for the portion of the parking structure that the city uses? I don’t think so.

Calling around to people who have some idea of what would be negotiated in a development agreement with TIC, expect that the city will have to pay for construction of its portion of the parking structure and maintenance of the same.

So now it looks like the city will be paying for 280 spaces in a parking structure on land the city will not own. How do you think this affects citizens who want to visit city hall?

First understand that the parking on San Nichols Drive between Newport Center Drive and Avocado, where city hall is being proposed, is already “Controlled Access Parking.”

What is controlled-access parking? It’s parking for which you pay $1 for each 20-minute segment because you lost or forget to get your parking ticket validated before you got back in your car. TIC is planning an additional 206,000 square feet of office space in this same area.

Therefore, the city’s parking spaces will also have to be accessed controlled. So whenever you go to do anything at city hall, you will have to take a ticket. Just don’t forget the validation.

Of course, that does not include city staff or council — they get a card key to get in and out. Only citizens need to take a ticket.

Now compare this to the City Hall in the Park plan. Thursday afternoon I had the pleasure of talking to two proponents of the park plan: Bill Ficker and Ron Hendrickson.

Besides the fact that the citizens of Newport Beach already own the land, another major difference with their plan is that the “below line of site” parking structure they have planned would provide not only 280 parking spaces for city hall but an additional 120 much-needed spaces for the library.

In addition, the parking could also be used for the park. This parking would be open to the public with no parking tickets to lose.

What a concept: free parking when you go to the library, city hall or the park. Here’s a tough decision. Should the city use the several million dollars already budgeted for the parking lot in the park on city hall or should we just save it?

The reason I bring up these inane issues is that when you are being told that it costs more to build on land we already own than on land we have to buy, you have to wonder are the opponents of city hall in the park comparing apples to apples.Parking costs are just one of the issues with which they are trying to confuse you.