Making a Point : Art Projects Sought to Upgrade Corona del Mar Site

The wooden benches are worn. The concrete slabs atop the bluff are drab. The asphalt path sloping to the ocean is ordinary.

But from Inspiration Point in Corona del Mar, visitors have an eagles-nest view of a multi-hued sea swirling around jagged rocks below. And the Newport Beach Arts Commission wants the man-made facilities at Inspiration Point to complement nature’s handiwork.

The commission has targeted the point--at Ocean Boulevard and Narcissus Avenue--for its first “art in public places” project, according to Deborah Polonsky, commission chairwoman.

And, at a public meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Newport Beach City Council chambers, six teams of landscape architects and artists from as far away as San Francisco will present their competing visions of a spruced-up Inspiration Point.

Two days later, the six designs will be reviewed by the nine-member Inspiration Point Advisory Review Panel, which will recommend three plans to the Arts Commission and the Parks, Beach and Recreation Commission, Polonsky said.

The nine panel members are Corona del Mar residents, urban planners and landscape architects, museum curators and state and local officials, she said.

One design will be submitted to the City Council for approval, probably on Aug. 13, Polonsky said. Work at the site may be completed by next June.

Inspiration Point has not fallen on hard times, said Polonsky, pointing out that lovers still wander there, office workers gather for lunch-break picnics, and beachgoers descend to the sand below. But there could be a park area near the top of the point, with boulders carved into benches and tables. Two boulders would be placed next to each other--one with just a trickle of recirculating salt water.

That’s the vision of Santa Barbara landscape architects Cunningham Design Inc. and artists Helen and Newton Harrison, Paul Hobson and Marcello Petrocelli.

The Santa Ana firm of POD Inc. and artist Doug Moran envision the path to the beach leveling off at a point halfway down the cliffs, where path users would come upon an elevated sculpture of three 15-foot copper and nickel rings--representing the sun, moon and Earth--slowly rotating in the breeze, under a quadrangular roof. Behind the sculpture, the wind would whistle through a 22-foot tall spike.

The path may be made of vermilion asphalt, “like a red carpet” welcoming visitors, according to the proposal submitted by LA Group Inc. of Calabasas Park.

Polonsky said her committee on public art will choose the proposal that best incorporates art into the environment and enhances nature.

“It’s got to be definitely something subtle,” she said. “We don’t want anything to impede anyone’s view.”

To meet such goals, for example, Cunningham Design proposes to knock five feet off the bluff’s upper plateau, which landscape architect David Black said would help separate Inspiration Point from the street, providing a transition “from the urban environment to the natural environment.”

The Cunningham proposal would cost more than $300,000 to implement, Black said. Polonsky would not say how much money is available for the project, but Black said he was told the budget is $150,000. Polonsky said that much of the money would be appropriated by the City Council but suggested that there may be private donations as well.

Black said he was counting on help from the private sector.

“I’d hate to think they’d go with a design they really didn’t want because of cost,” Black said.

The Arts Commission gave each of the six teams $1,500 to develop the proposals.

Scale models of the proposed projects can be viewed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays in the lobby of Newport Beach City Hall, 3300 Newport Blvd.