‘Broken Dreams’ Boulevard : While Plans Abound, No One Can Agree on Best Way to Revitalize Old Newport

Owen Minney is armed and ready--but also tired.

Backed by thousands of pages of blueprints and reports about environmental impact, the 49-year-old entrepreneur is ready to break ground on his $1-million dream: a residential-commercial development that would help revitalize the rundown street that once was the gateway to Newport Beach.

But after four years of lobbying the city to change its zoning and let him build his building on the west side of old Newport Boulevard, Minney is tired of waiting.

“To me, it’s a boulevard of broken dreams,” said Minney, who sold his house in Newport Heights and tore down his buildings on old Newport Boulevard in 1988 in anticipation of going ahead with his condominium and commercial complex.

“I’m just a guy with a piece of property who wants to spend my money,” he said. “There’s no reason that anyone who wants to develop their property to have to wait years for the city to change (its) mind.”

Minney, a 43-year city resident who has owned the lot on old Newport Boulevard since 1977, began his quest in 1988 by seeking a waiver that would allow him to go ahead with the mixed-use and commercial project.

The city’s General Plan allows mixed use on the east side but only commercial development on the west side of the street, even though both sides have old homes and a few cubbyhole apartments that predate the 1988 General Plan.

Three times the Planning Commission gave Minney the nod; and the City Council, in turn, twice rejected the project. Then, when council members finally approved the General Plan amendment in February, they simultaneously launched a committee to examine exactly how this long-neglected stretch of street should look in the future.

No new development can occur until the committee finishes its work, and while Minney is one of the half-dozen residents and property owners on the committee, it’s still unclear whether he will ever be able to create a mixed-use project on the west side of old Newport Boulevard--which today is also known variously as Newport Avenue or North Newport Boulevard.

“This is not an Owen Minney specific area plan, this is an old Newport Boulevard specific area plan,” said Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart, who is chairwoman of the ad-hoc committee. “I have no idea if we’ll even discuss mixed-use.”

Regardless of the zoning, residents and business owners in the area agree it is time for a face lift.

Old Newport Boulevard today is mix of new and decaying motels and bars, modern business complexes and a few old homes that seems stuck in 1953, the year that the parallel thoroughfare, new Newport Boulevard, opened up.

Winding up from the fabled Arches Restaurant at Coast Highway to 17th Street in Costa Mesa, the mile-long original boulevard is perhaps the last undeveloped portion of Newport Beach, the affluent coastal community that is home to high-end shopping malls as well as strips of chic boutiques.

“I call it the neglected stepchild of Newport Beach,” said Dolores Bowles, an ad hoc committee member who has lived on the old boulevard since 1955. “It’s something that’s going to have to change. I personally would just like to see it cleaned up.”

Once upon a time, recalled Albert Irwin, who has owned a small market on old Newport Boulevard since 1935, the two-lane street was a busy thoroughfare, crowded with beach-goers from as far away as San Bernardino.

“That was the main artery to the peninsula,” Irwin said. “It was as nice as any street in the area. Especially weekends, Easter week, and summertime, that was a very heavily traveled area. Traffic on those special days was real heavy.”

Now, though, the boulevard is usually deserted. As cars whiz by on the multilane Newport Boulevard, old Newport Boulevard remains largely idle.

“It is way below its potential,” said engineering consultant Jerry Tucker, president of the Old Newport Boulevard Property Owners group and a member of the committee that is to study the area. “It’s just a mishmash of a lot of stuff now. It’s an area that has kind of just fallen asleep and nothing’s ever happened to it for many years.”

As residents contemplate a specific area plan for the boulevard, some say what it needs are gutters and street repairs. Others think trees and flowers will make the area cohesive and attractive to business owners and potential shoppers. There has been talk of a parking lot at the south end to serve new retail outlets and even a special bike trail to help lure people to the wide, rambling street. Many, like Minney, think rezoning is the key to attracting new development.

When the city adopted its General Plan in 1988, old Newport Boulevard was “down-zoned” so that new buildings could only take up half the square-footage of a given lot. In addition, residential buildings were prohibited from the west side, although mixed-use development is the zoning rule across the street.

City planners and council members say the residential restriction was adopted because of excessive noise generated by busy Newport Boulevard. But Minney says that he would love to live there and that old Newport Boulevard’s high perch offers a clear ocean view that would attract condominium dwellers.

Whether Minney gets his way will be determined, in part, by the specific area plan committee, whose charge it is to plot a redesign for both sides of old Newport Boulevard from Catalina Drive to 15th Street. But the committee has yet to meet, though it was authorized last March and its members selected in October.

And once the work commences in January, council members and city planning staffers expect that drafting a specific area plan will take six months to a year, leaving prospective builders like Minney stuck holding their blueprints.

“The city knows by now that we want to build commercial/residential on this side of the street, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it, they should just let me go ahead and build,” Minney said, showing off more than 150 letters residents sent the City Council in support of his project. “Once a couple guys like me do what we’re going to do, it’ll clean right up. Everybody’s just waiting.

“I think it’s a neat old street, it could be a nice cohesive area,” he said, wistfully looking around his empty lot. “It’s the gateway to Newport.”