Newport Beach : Coast Panel Approves Santa Ana Heights Plan

The California Coastal Commission has approved a mixed commercial and residential development for a site overlooking Upper Newport Bay in Santa Ana Heights. The 12-member panel said, however, that any plans to extend University Drive through the project will require separate commission approval.

When the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved the project earlier this year, the developer, J. M. Peters Co., was required to set aside space for the eventual extension of University Drive, something county planners say is needed to relieve traffic congestion on Bristol Street and the Corona del Mar freeway.

The coast panel said Wednesday that its approval of the development plan did not constitute consent to the county road project, which the commission believes would pose a threat to the bay’s ecology.

“If there had been a way to approve the J. M. Peters Project and kill University Drive once and for all, I’d have done that,” said Peter Xander, the lead Coastal Commission planner involved with the project.

Because the county would have to seek Coastal Commission approval to extend the street through the development, the likelihood that such a project will be undertaken is nil, Xander said.

“I’m convinced that University Drive is dead, and if it rears its head again, we can kill it,” he said.

The plan approved by the commission calls for construction of 148 single-family houses, 88 town houses, a 300-room hotel, and a restaurant, health club and offices on 64 acres at Bristol Street and Jamboree Boulevard, near John Wayne Airport.