NEWPORT BEACH : Voters to Decide on Sale of Land Parcel

Voters on Nov. 3 will be asked once again whether the city should sell a 30-by-100-foot parcel of land in west Newport that has been known unofficially for years as People’s Park.

Councilwoman Jean H. Watt and several dozen residents want voters to reject Measure N, which asks that the city be given authority to sell the lot at 4210 River Ave.

Mayor Phil Sansone and the rest of the council, however, want voters to approve Measure N so the city can use the proceeds from the land, worth about $350,000, to help fund the new $8-million Central Library being built at Newport Center.

The city charter says that city-owned land on the bay or along the beach cannot be sold without voter approval.

Voters narrowly defeated a similar measure in 1989 that sought approval of the sale of the property.

“I feel it should be kept,” Watt said. “We ought to keep any mini-park we can get. If it’s sold, we lose it forever.”

Sansone, however, said: “It’s not a park. It never was a park, it never has been a park and it never will be a park.”

The lot’s next-door neighbor, Jack Alward, counters that the property is a park and has been since 1966, when he began caring for it.

He and his wife, Mischa, planted about two dozen trees on the parcel shortly after they moved into the house next door more than 25 years ago. The trees are now 25 feet to 30 feet tall, Alward said.

Measure N describes the lot as a “weed pile.” It says that if it is sold, the money would help pay for the completion of the city’s new library.

“No one ever uses” the lot for enjoyment, Sansone said. “It’s been to nobody’s use but its adjacent neighbor.”

Alward disagrees, saying many residents and passersby spend time in the lot, either playing, sitting or picnicking. He said a local group called Green Party had lunch there last week, proving that, to them, the park is not a “weed pile.”

“We want to get the word out that it is a lovely lot,” Alward said. “We should have a lot like this at every street corner in the city. Just the fact that it’s there should be reason enough to keep it.”

“We don’t have to worry that we’re not going to have a library. But the park we lose forever,” Watt said.

One west Newport resident, Rosemary Steinbrecher, and about 30 of her neighbors are trying to get the city to agree to turn part of the area into a badminton court. But city officials have maintained that the parcel has never been a park and therefore cannot be used as one.

Watt said city officials only discovered a few years ago that the lot belonged to the city. It was acquired in 1939 when the landowner could not pay his taxes, she said.

“You can always buy books for the library,” Steinbrecher said. “When the park’s sold, it’s gone forever.”