Inspiration Point Gets Arty New Look

The sunbathers who gaze out to sea from the Corona del Mar coastal bluff called Inspiration Point found their turf invaded by a small crowd of people in citified dress Thursday afternoon. The occasion was the official dedication of Newport Beach’s first Art in Public Places project.

Formerly run-down and erosion-prone, the lookout point on Ocean Boulevard between Narcissus and Orchid streets was refurbished by Cunningham Design Inc. of Santa Barbara with artists Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison, Marcello Petrocelli and Paul Hobson. They were the co-winners of a 1987 design competition sponsored by the city’s Arts Commission and the Parks, Beaches and Recreation Department.

Called “Disappearing Path,” the $310,300 project is nothing if not low-key. Replacing the former asphalt pathway, a steep, undulating sunken concrete walkway leads down from street level to a broad plateau and continues to the beach level below. The plateau offers sunbathers who want to linger a choice of concrete steps, boulders and simple-but-stylish teakwood benches on which to perch.

Stripped of its scrubby tangle of ice plant (and also, inadvertently, of some native plants that should have remained on the site) the coastal bluff is now virtually bare. The site has been seeded with grass as a temporary erosion-control measure, but next winter a plant specialist will revegetate the area with coastal sagebrush, California buckwheat, black sage, lemonade berry and other native species.

This replanting scheme, which will add texture and color as well as erosion control, is a key part of the project. Lloyd Dalton, a design engineer with the Newport Beach Public Works Department, explained that the delay in replanting is partly due to the fact that some of the plant materials have to be propagated from seeds rather than from cuttings, and most of the plants don’t go to seed until August.

The original “Disappearing Path” plan, budgeted by Cunningham Design at $402,770, would also have provided for the restructuring of the upper area of the site, adjacent to the road. This level was to have been lowered several feet and enhanced with seating and a fountain, all constructed with boulders.

But the city’s original budget for the project was only $152,661, so the design had to be scaled down. (The final costs for the walkway and landscaping were $202,800; the other $107,500 paid for restoration of the badly eroded bluff by the Public Works Department. Additional money for the project came from various Parks, Beaches and Recreation Department accounts.)

Other less-visible parts of the project include a drip-irrigation system, the relocation of a sewer that runs under the site and the riprap, or grouted rock, that protects the end of the pathway from being washed out during storms.

A chain-link fence at street level is a temporary device that will be removed as soon as the replanting is completed. But the temporary chain-link fence at the edge of the middle platform will be replaced this summer by a 42-inch-high safety railing because of potential liability problems.

For maximum visibility and good looks, Cunningham Design would like to see stanchions supporting a railing made of horizontal stainless-steel cables (“inspired by the lifeline on a yacht,” according to principal partner Bob Cunningham). Dalton is concerned that such a design would cost too much, however, and a final decision on the design has not yet been made. The steep grade of the “disappearing path”--which caused a few visitors to grumble several days ago--was unchanged from that of the original trail, Dalton said.

Landscape architect David Black, another Cunningham Design partner, called the project “very simple, very straightforward,” with “a certain elegance of the forms.” He said the architect-artist team “articulated the path in a way we felt was very artistic in terms of the curves.

“Obviously we had some constraints in budget, but we tried to do something functional yet creative. . . . I think we handled that in a sort of unobtrusive yet elegant way. They (the city) didn’t want something outrageous or avant-garde.”