New Center Will Offer a Window on Wetlands

Much like the famous, ancient Native American cliff dwellings in the Arizona desert, the new Upper Newport Bay Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center has been built into a bluff in Newport Beach.

But when the $8-million center opens Saturday, it will be a tribute not to arid desert but to Southern California’s marshy wetlands.

The center, named for local naturalists who donated $1 million toward its creation, will emphasize education, outreach, entertainment and classroom learning.

It is mere feet from the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Preserve and Nature Preserve, but except for its triangular roof--which lies even with the parking lot--you can’t see the facility from street level.

You can, however, see the lush estuary below.

There, saltwater and freshwater marshes pock the preserve. Coastal sage, pickle weed, cordgrass and the endangered bird’s beak plant flourish. Hundreds of migratory birds like the light-footed clapper rail rest and nest after marathon flights.

“The Upper Newport reserve is one of the most important wetland estuaries that we’ve been able to save along the Southern California coast,” said Jean Watt, president of Friends of Harbors, Beaches and Parks and a former Newport Beach city councilwoman. “This center will help people understand the need for such places.”

Wetlands, with their thick vegetation, help filter polluted water coming from inland watersheds before it reaches the ocean, Watt said. In Upper Newport Bay alone, two notoriously polluted channels release their contents: the Santa Ana Delhi Channel and the San Diego Creek Channel. But most of Southern California’s wetlands have been replaced by development.

With the Interpretive Center so close to the protected wetland, the teaching becomes that much more dramatic and firsthand, said Patti Schooley, a county operations supervisor for coastal facilities.

“There’s nothing like going out there and seeing it firsthand and experiencing it,” Schooley said.

Perhaps no two people will take greater satisfaction in the Interpretive Center’s opening than Frank and Francis Robinson, the octogenarian couple whose landmark battle against the Irvine Co. over Upper Newport Bay more than 30 years ago helped create the wetland preserve--and helped spur environmental consciousness in Orange County.

When the Board of Supervisors--reversing itself--voted in 1974 not to allow the Irvine Co. to develop the land, Raymond Watson, then company president, proclaimed that “the project got caught up in a change of values.”

Twenty-six years later, the Interpretive Center will open with a Frank and Francis Robinson Exhibit Hall.

“When you put half a lifetime into something, there’s not a big enough batch of superlatives to describe your joy,” said Frank Robinson. “It’s going to be the happiest day of my life, with the exception of the day Francis and I married 58 years ago.”

Architecturally, the Interpretive Center’s design reflects a desire to be environmentally sensitive. There’s a reason it is not visible from the corner of Irvine Avenue and University Drive.

“We wanted to preserve as much open space as possible, so we tucked it underneath,” said Ron Yeo, the Corona del Mar architect.

But when visitors start streaming into the Interpretive Center, they will be walking into a facility that differs from the architect’s original vision.

Initially, the plan was for the Interpretive Center to be completely subterranean, Yeo said. But after a loss of public funds when the county went bankrupt in 1994, the plan had to be significantly scaled back, with the building jutting out of the cliff.

“Costwise, we could only do half of what we envisioned,” Yeo said. “That was a little disappointing.”

However, the 10,000-square-foot building itself is a testament to environmental sustainability. The carpet is made of recycled water bottles. The wood for the doors and windows came from scraps of leftover mahogany that normally would have been thrown away. Recycled steel bars reinforce the concrete.

And most of the colorful ceramic tiles used in the restrooms came from discontinued stock collected by Yeo and his staff.

The building site was once used by Shoshone Gabrielino Indians, so Yeo tried to emulate the Native American practice of using whatever materials were at hand.

“We want people to learn more about the estuary and appreciate and take better care of it,” Yeo said. “Part of taking care is recycling.”

Native grasses and other vegetation are being reintroduced as landscaping. Drains that lead to settling basins were built into the parking lot so that sediment and other materials from construction would not reach the reserve, Yeo said. That was just one of the precautions taken to ensure that construction on the bluff did not pollute the wetlands, the architect said.

For Frank Robinson, it’s all a step toward protecting those magical places that, increasingly, exist only in majestic solitude.

“Go down Backbay [Drive, along Upper Newport Bay] to where the narrows are, near Big Canyon. Get out of the car and do nothing,” Robinson said. “It sounds like the traffic is a hundred miles away. It’s an eerie, lonesome quiet you can’t buy.”

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In Harmony with the Bay

The Upper Newport Bay Interpretive Center, designed to educate the public about and promote protection of the bay and coastal wetlands, opens Saturday. The $8 million building was made in part of recycled wood, plastic, steel, even gun parts. A look inside the unique 10,000-square-foot structure:

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The “underground center” is built into a hillside, so it doesn’t block views of the bay from above. Its roof is planted with native grasses to unite it with the surrounding ecosystem.

Migratory Chain

Millions of birds migrate annually along the Pacific Flyway, a seasonal pathway from northern breeding grounds to warmer wintering areas in South America. Upper Newport Bay is one of the largest remaining estuaries between central California and Mexico.

Source: Upper Newport Bay Interpretive Center