Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : CITIES : Voters Give Thumbs Down to Expansion at Newport Center

To Allan Beek, who had campaigned hard and won, the election outcome had grand significance.

It meant, he said, that “we have reached the end of high-rise expansion in Newport Beach. The developers who have been cleaning the place out will go look somewhere else for their quick profits.”

Beek had co-founded Gridlock, a grass-roots group that opposed the City Council’s approval of Irvine Co.’s latest plans to expand Newport Center. Gridlock qualified a referendum, forced a special election and last week, after spending $10,000 on its campaign, defeated a $500,000 effort by the Irvine Co.

The margin was hefty--11,390 to 8,260. About 43% of the city’s registered voters cast ballots, a strong turnout for a special election.

Thomas H. Nielsen, vice-chairman of the Irvine Co., expressed the firm’s “disappointment” that the $300-million expansion plan had been defeated but predicted that “one day it will be completed; that’s a certainty. How and in what form are, in light of the election outcome, the unanswered questions.”

It was only the latest defeat for Newport Center expansion plans. Before last week’s election, the Irvine Co. had been forced to scale down its expansion proposals three times during the last 10 years.