NEWPORT BEACH : Snags Still Hamper Annexation Effort

City officials say sticking points remain in the 10-year-old effort to annex Santa Ana Heights, primarily the cost of improving streets and sewers and building a new fire station.

The 193-acre neighborhood just south of John Wayne Airport was historically a low-density housing area, said Kenneth Delino, executive assistant to the Newport Beach city manager. But in the last three years, the area has been divided into three zones: commercial, residential and equestrian.

Needed improvements to the area include widening Birch Street between Bristol Street and Mesa Drive. Birch Street will be the main thoroughfare for a planned business park. The sewer system must also be enlarged, and a new fire station must be built, Delino said.

According to a Newport Beach report, total costs for these improvements will be more than $24 million.

The county has thus far asked Newport to pay about $12 million of those costs.

Delino said Newport Beach officials have no problem with the cost estimates but do think that the Santa Ana Heights redevelopment agency, created by the county, should pay most of the infrastructure costs.

Delino argued that Newport Beach residential development around that area is fueling the agency with its taxes.

The city’s “strong position is that the redevelopment agency . . . should pay for immediate funding for the street, immediate funding for the sewers and a big chunk for the fire station,” he said.

Some development in the business park already has begun.

Rob Hamers, an engineer with the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, which serves that area, said that requests for sewer construction are already “straining our system in its existing condition.”

Bounded by Newport Beach on all sides--Bristol Street on the north, Acacia Street on the west, Bayview Avenue on the east and the Upper Newport Bay on the south--the Santa Ana Heights area “is going to come into the city eventually,” Delino said.