For Costa Mesa Boosters, It’s a Matter of Pride and Prejudice : Status: The city’s virtues are ignored as people compare it unfairly with Newport and Irvine, say those who crave a new civic image.

For as long as people here can remember, Costa Mesa has struggled with its image as Newport Beach’s poor cousin.

Charles and Betty Jean Beecher, founders of the Costa Mesa Historical Society, wince at the city’s nickname, “Goat Hill,” a term used by its Newport neighbors to put down people from Costa Mesa.

Though few people still use that term, a knock on the city’s agricultural past, old perceptions die hard, and most people in town are keenly aware that Costa Mesa is neither as wealthy as Newport Beach nor as tidy as Irvine. “You always hear people say things like, ‘I live in Costa Mesa but right on the edge of Newport Beach,’ ” said Robin Rielley, 30, a technical writer who lives on Costa Mesa’s west side.

Tired of unfavorable comparisons with her comely and rich sisters, a coterie of Costa Mesa business people and boosters has pressured the City Council into trying to shed the city’s ugly ducking status.

The council in recent months has outlawed giant advertising balloons that residents said made the town look sloppy, ordered the closure of two seedy motels on the city’s main drag, expanded its police force and even hired a public relations company to promote the city’s assets.

And city officials say Costa Mesa is easy to promote: Neighborhoods are cleaner than ever, the schools are improving and the city has had unprecedented success in recent months attracting quality businesses, including a division of Unocal Corp., which is moving 700 of its employees to Costa Mesa next year. South Coast Plaza, among the region’s largest and most popular malls, is in Costa Mesa, even if many shoppers are unaware of that.

Such amenities may help city boosters forget that when a popular, giant record retailer opened a couple of years ago in Triangle Square it named itself Virgin Megastore--Newport Beach. Or that the Costa Mesa Freeway was called the Newport Beach Freeway for several decades, even though it cuts straight through the middle of Costa Mesa, not even touching Newport Beach.

But somehow what Costa Mesa has to offer pales in comparison with its neighbors.

Says City Manager Allan L. Roeder: “Obviously nobody likes to hear that my community is second best to somebody else.”

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Of the trio, Costa Mesa is still the poorest and has the highest crime rate (though its population of 96,357 does beat Newport’s 66,643 but not Irvine’s 110,330).

Average income in Costa Mesa is $20,543 a year, according to the Orange County Economic Development Consortium. Newport Beach residents were the wealthiest in the county, averaging $49,593 a year while Irvine’s average income was $23,425. Costa Mesa has the most racially diverse population of the three, with minority groups comprising 28% of the population compared with 26% in Irvine and 7% in Newport Beach.

Costa Mesa residents keep reminding the council that as long as more crime occurs in Costa Mesa than the other two, people will continue to snub the city. In 1993, the latest year for which statistics are available, the crime rate in Costa Mesa was 7.8 incidents per 100 residents, compared with 5.5 in Newport Beach and 4.1 in Irvine, according to the state Department of Justice.

Eastside resident Chris Steel said the crime issue makes Costa Mesa the ugly sister to Newport Beach. “We joke about how people come here and work for a while until they get enough money to move to Newport,” said Steel, 54, an investor who moved to the city from Pittsburgh about 20 years ago. “They have less crime and less density, and I think we should be moving in that direction.”

Council members are quick to reply that there is no more violent crime in their city per capita than the rest of the county, and that the higher number of crimes reported reflects diligent tallying of minor incidents. Still, Costa Mesa outnumbered both its neighbors in 1993 in the number of murders. Five people were slain in Costa Mesa compared with one in Irvine and three in Newport Beach.

Nevertheless, to calm edgy residents, the city beefed up its funding for law enforcement. The police force was allocated funds to hire nine police officers, increasing the force from 143 to 152.

On the cleanliness front, Costa Mesa’s main competition comes from Irvine. “We often hear things like ‘Well, in Irvine it is this way or that way,’ ” Roeder said. “And I am constantly having to explain that Irvine is different. It was a planned community that had one land owner for a long time. But since it is a neighboring city, people here use it as a standard.”

More than any other city in the county, Irvine has developed tight regulations governing the color of paint on houses, signs on businesses and even whether you may leave your garage door open overnight, creating an aesthetic that some call sterile.

Still, the pressure from Costa Mesa residents to move toward a standard set by Irvine has prompted the City Council to take action against slovenliness in Costa Mesa.

In early August, the council, prompted by constant complaints from residents that the giant Uncle Sam and gaudy Godzilla advertising balloons made the city look cheap, demanded that the oversized eyesores be taken down. “Most of them are visual pollutants,” said Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle.

For similar reasons, the city has busied itself in recent weeks searching for a way to crack down on dozens of garage sales that clutter sidewalks every weekend on the east side. Heather Somers of the Eastside Homeowners Assn. said the neighbors are simply fed up with garage sale proprietors who litter lawns and driveways every weekend with their wares and garish signs.

“They are totally obnoxious,” Somers said. “We have one guy who puts his stuff up across the street from his house so he can get better visibility.”

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Some may pity Peggy Lefebvre, the advertising executive hired recently to create a new image for the city.

“It is going to be very challenging,” she said.

One nagging problem: Costa Mesa, a conglomeration of small neighborhoods, is so diverse it has no uniform identity, Lefebvre said.

But Lefebvre said she hopes to get the point across that many popular destinations are in the city even if few travelers know they are in Costa Mesa.

Summing up her task, she spoke volumes about Costa Mesa’s inferiority complex.

“Most people don’t know that many of the jewels of Orange County are in Costa Mesa,” she said. “The performing arts center, for example, is called the Orange County Performing Arts Center. There is no mention of Costa Mesa.”

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Image Problem

Costa Mesa wants to shed its image as the poor cousin of Newport Beach and Irvine. Yet in some categories it isn’t that different from its neighbors.

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Costa Mesa Population % 1990 Total 96,357 -- White 69,493 72 Hispanic 19,319 20 Asian 5,998 6 Black 1,140 1 Native American 340 * Other 67 *

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Irvine Population % 1990 Total 110,330 -- White 81,483 74 Asian 19,701 18 Hispanic 6,902 6 Black 1,912 2 Native American 206 * Other 126 *

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Newport Beach Population % 1990 Total 66,643 -- White 61,727 93 Hispanic 2,648 4 Asian 1,884 3 Black 215 * Native American 148 * Other 21 *

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Orange County Population % 1990 Total 2,410,555 -- White 1,554,500 65 Hispanic 564,828 23 Asian 240,756 10 Black 39,159 2 Native American 8,584 * Other 2,728 *

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City Average Income Costa Mesa $20,543 Newport Beach $49,593 Irvine $23,425 Orange County $25,344

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City Year Incorporated: Costa Mesa 1953 Irvine 1971 Newport Beach 1906

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City Median Age Costa Mesa 31.2 Irvine 31.5 Newport Beach 39.5 Orange County 31.5

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Sources: 1990 census data and Orange County Economic Development Consortium

Researched by HOPE HAMASHIGE / For The Times