Mailbag: The planning case for the Museum House

As a former planning commissioner, I have been asked by many residents about the Museum House project. After thorough review, I support the project as a planning matter. So I won’t be signing any petition to put the project to a public vote in an expensive special election.

I live in Big Canyon, and of course, would not favor anything that I thought harmed Big Canyon in general, or my home in particular. I carefully reviewed portions of the independently prepared environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. This is the document that analyzes whether a project causes impacts.

My focus was on traffic. The EIR determined there would be no real impacts from traffic. From my experience in looking at numerous traffic studies while on the Planning Commission, this makes sense to me.

This type of housing does not generate nearly the traffic volume of similarly sized retail or office uses. And in the case of Museum House, the demographic will generally be wealthy, older residents. When not traveling and in residence, most owners of units will not be getting up and going to work. So traffic will be very minimal.

The increase in vehicle trips over the existing museum will be about 300 per day, spread over 24 hours. If they were spread over 10 hours, that would average one trip every two minutes. Simply put, no factual basis exists to support a claim that the project will exacerbate traffic congestion.

The project will not block any views. There are already six buildings in the area along San Joaquin Hills Road of comparable height, however, the elevation of the building pad for Museum House will be lower than the comparable office buildings to begin with. Water restrictions from the drought will not be increased by the addition of a couple of hundred residents in a town of over 80,000 people.

There is no such thing as precedent in land-use decisions. One approval does not mean any future approvals must be granted. And Newport Beach has the Greenlight Initiative, passed in 2000, which severely limits future Newport Center entitlement approvals after Museum House. So the argument that Newport Center will become Manhattan, Century City or some other place should be recognized for the exaggeration that it is.

Based upon the facts, I do not fear Museum House even though it will be very close to my home. It will cause no impacts.

Larry Tucker

Newport Beach

Fashion Island is zoned for tall structures

The opposition group that is trying to prevent the construction of the new 25-story, 100-unit condominium project is about 30 years too late. Let’s look at the details.

The new condo project is to be built in Fashion Island next to several other high-rise office buildings. If the anti-building crowd was so serious about modern, thoughtful development, they should have been voicing their opposition when the other high-rise office buildings were in the planning stages decades ago.

Back then, nobody was in opposition because Fashion Island was the place for large structures. And it still is. Nobody’s views are being threatened, and the recent road modernization can handle the increase in traffic.

The anti-development crowd is a day late and a dollar short when it comes to its opposition of a new modern high-rise housing project. Museum House is the right project in the right location.

Rob Macfarlane

Newport Beach