Newport Council to Consider 10 P.M. Curfew at Beaches

The Newport Beach City Council on Monday night will consider setting a 10 p.m. curfew at city beaches in an effort to reduce late-night revelry that oceanfront residents say invades their privacy and keeps them awake.

City beaches, which stretch from the Santa Ana River south to the Wedge at the Newport Harbor entrance, now close at midnight.

Huntington Beach, San Clemente and Seal Beach have midnight curfews; Laguna Beach essentially has none. Some state beaches, such as the Newport Beach-operated Corona del Mar State Beach, close at 10 p.m.

Because their front yards are shared by the public, Newport residents living on the water’s edge say they are continually subjected to traffic and noisy beach-goers long past midnight. So they have banded together in asking the City Council to adopt what they say is a fair compromise.

“We are just virtual prisoners,” said Dayna Pettit, president of the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn., one of three homeowner groups lobbying for the early beach closure.

“We’re not against partying,” Pettit said. “But there has to be a time when the city effects measures that balance the rights of the tourists and property owners.”

To avoid a legal fight over that balance, Chief of Police Arb Campbell and Newport Beach City Manager Robert L. Wynn and his staff are urging the City Council to reject the idea.

Instead, Wynn and Campbell are recommending the installation of lights facing the shoreline on the beach flanking the Balboa and Newport Beach piers to discourage lawlessness and signal the beaches’ closing.

“Our objection is twofold,” Wynn said. An earlier curfew “means even a resident could not go along the beach” after 10 p.m. Also, Wynn said, the noise and traffic problems from late night beach-goers are concentrated around the two piers, so early closing of beaches for the entire 5.8 miles may be overkill.

Pettit and the presidents of two other large homeowner associations lobbying for earlier beach closure think lights may not be enough.

In an April 16 letter to city officials, Pettit and her association also suggested that at 10 p.m., police could sweep the beach area in a helicopter and make loudspeaker announcements that the beach is closed.

“And residents would not object at 10 p.m. as they did at midnight.”

Pettit’s group, the Central Newport Beach Community Assn. and the West Newport Beach Assn., which together represent several hundred property owners along the beach, argue that the early beach closure would help police enforce the citywide 10 p.m. curfew for minors. Also, they say, there is a shortage of officers at beach closing time because shifts change at midnight.

But they favor allowing the beach near the Balboa Pier to remain open until midnight because it is the only spot with fire rings.

In opposing the earlier beach closure, however, Police Chief Campbell said more people would need to be “ushered” from the beach at 10 p.m. than at midnight. “This would result in a significant enforcement problem for the Police Department.”

More Officers Needed

At least three new officers and two four-wheel-drive vehicles would be needed, he said. He urged the lighting approach, which he estimated would cost about $30,000.

Bill Gold has lived with his wife, Helen, on the Balboa Peninsula beachfront for 22 years. He supports closing the beach at 10 p.m. but admits “there really aren’t that many people out there after 10.”

But those that do stay late can be downright obnoxious, he said.

“I’ve been out here before when a guy is out 10 feet from my wall making out with his girlfriend and a guy is urinating in my front yard,” he said.

He wouldn’t mind announcements by helicopter loudspeaker, but “the lights I’m against. That’s stupid. Any encroachments like that I’m against.”

The 172 residents who responded to questionnaires from the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn. shared many of Gold’s complaints. Pettit said all but 12 respondents favored closing the beach at 10 p.m. The few who opposed the idea echoed the following sentiment:

“I’d hate to get in trouble with the law should I decide on taking a midnight stroll,” one man wrote. “This is not something we do but once in a while. I just would like to have that option open.”