Newport Council Drops Opposition to Monorail

The Newport Beach City Council, which had threatened to delay the expansion of John Wayne Airport over construction of a private monorail linking the airport to a nearby Irvine office complex, agreed Monday night to withdraw its challenge.

The council, which voted unanimously to drop its opposition to the monorail, agreed to do so on condition that no airport terminal services, such as baggage-checking, would be allowed at either the twin 23-story office and residential towers or at the airport end of the proposed monorail line.

A second condition, according to City Manager Robert L. Wynn, calls for the city of Irvine, Newport Beach “and as many other cities in Orange County as possible to urge the Board (of Supervisors) to seek and find a second airport site (for Orange County).”

Wynn said the memorandum of understanding approved by the council was drafted Monday by attorneys for the county and the cities of Irvine and Newport Beach.

Although both the Irvine City Council and the Board of Supervisors still must formally approve the agreement, it appeared Monday night to effectively remove the most daunting obstacle yet to what would be the country’s first privately funded monorail outside Disneyland.

Bob Young, president of McDonnell Douglas Realty Co., which has proposed building and paying for the $3.5-million, half-mile monorail to its planned towers in Irvine, said Monday night that the project now should move “full speed ahead.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who first proposed such an agreement and whose district includes both the airport and the city of Newport Beach, could not be reached for comment late Monday.

Although the city of Newport Beach technically has no authority over the monorail or the airport expansion, as a practical matter the city had the potential power to delay both with legal challenges because foundation supports for the monorail needed to be done in tandem with early construction work at the airport.

The Board of Supervisors gave the monorail project unanimous endorsement Oct. 25, calling it a novel opportunity to make a dent in the county’s traffic problems at no cost to taxpayers.

Newport Beach, which has long battled the county over the noise of departing aircraft and airport expansion, in January appealed the county’s ruling that the monorail would cause no negative environmental impacts.

The settlement proposed in Riley’s Feb. 27 letter offered the county’s promise to do the requested environmental studies after monorail foundations are built but before the entire project is constructed in return for the city withdrawing its appeal. That condition was dropped Monday.