Mailbag: Museum House project would help the arts thrive in O.C.

A longtime neighborhood friend stood in front of the Newport Beach Planning Commission the other night. The subject was whether to allow a high-rise luxury condominium tower to be approved on the land currently occupied by the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA).

This friend has a long and esteemed history in Newport Beach preservation efforts, but when she spoke of “this quaint fishing/boating village of a town,” I knew we were of two minds. I too am a long-time resident, 42 years, and have been a genuine supporter of efforts to preserve open space and prevent overdevelopment. But I also support the arts, venues for which — music and theater — have been congregating, for our county, on the lima-bean farm lands of the late Henry Segerstrom, in next-door Costa Mesa. He thought so strongly that a first-class museum should join his two concert halls and South Coast Repertory theater that he donated land for the venture.

It’s my understanding that the high-rise residential tower, Museum House, is within the allowed limits of the General Plan, and the Greenlight Initiative of 2006. But all of us with our town’s vibrant future in mind realize that high-rise living is the only way a burgeoning population is going to be able to preserve land and scarce water. We need to get over our single-family residences that are sprawled over the Southland, and that force us into our cars for work, errands and recreation.

Museum House is a win-win for the future of our community. We will all gain when OCMA is allowed the space in which to demonstrate its world-class status as a museum of modern and contemporary art.

Karen Evarts

Newport Beach

The writer is a volunteer docent at OCMA.

Council needs to listen to us on Museum House

Dean R. Laws ends his Oct. 23 letter (“Museum House is too dense for Newport”) objecting to Museum House by wishing the Newport Beach community were more respected by the council. This is what has mystified and angered me since arriving here 22 years ago. Obviously, and according to its charter, this is primarily a residential city. There is no question what the residents want, given letters to the Daily Pilot, surveys and the forest of pitchforks so often brandished in City Hall: it is stability of population and traffic.

So why is this clear wish of the represented sublimely ignored by their representatives? Whatever the answer, here’s a golden tip to any candidate for election to the council: Forget the boilerplate and the poetry. Make a single-minded promise that your No. 1 priority will be to preserve the General Plan and do all you can to arrest further development. You will win in a landslide.

Tom Moulson

Corona del Mar

Enjoyed the piece on dining at home

Thank you for publishing the interesting, enjoyable and useful commentary “Eating Restaurant-Style at Home” (Sept. 30) by Liz Swiertz Newman. I have been reading her well-written columns locally and am quite happy that the Daily Pilot is now included in the L.A. Times delivery in Huntington Beach. This provides the wider audience that such an excellent column deserves.

Troy Miller

Huntington Beach