NEWPORT BEACH : Sidewalk Policy Gets Results--of a Sort

A city policy aimed at installation of sidewalks along residential streets is slowly getting results--but in a way that makes some streets look like a crazy quilt.

“You can probably find, in the city of Newport Beach, an example of anything that you want to come up with in the way of sidewalks or lack thereof,” City Engineer Don Webb said. “Yes, it does create a patchwork initially. But eventually the pieces will connect and you have something.”

Where walks were not installed with the original home construction, the Building Department requires that property owners install walks when doing renovations that increase floor space by 25% or more.

Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and Costa Mesa have similar policies, triggered when the owner adds at least 50% to the home’s floor space or increases occupancy.

As a result, the sidewalks in some neighborhoods are hardly continuous.

Planning Commission Chairwoman Norma Glover says the policy made parts of her Newport Heights neighborhood an eyesore because the sidewalk hopscotches from lot to lot.

Glover’s concern is uniformity.

“It just does not make sense to be walking down the street and have a pad of cement in the middle of somebody’s lawn,” she said. “They might not even have abutting properties, so all you have is a patch of cement out there. It’s ugly.”

Some walks are straight and plain. Others meander through landscaped parkways and dense flower beds. Some are brick and others concrete. In some places, imposing the requirement at all is impractical.

“There are some areas where existing old trees might preclude the placement of a sidewalk,” Webb says.

“This is a community that was founded in 1906, and during the years, the way public improvements have been constructed has changed,” he said.

On that, Glover agrees.

“In mature cities, you’re going to have neighborhoods that have different environments,” she said. “Everything can’t look like Irvine. Everything can’t look like Mission Viejo.”