Parade Plan Stirs Up a Storm

Newport Beach usually drops its pretenses and puts on its party clothes this time of year, joining together for the Christmas boat parade, the town’s biggest community bash of the holiday season.

But this year, the event is arriving with all the harrumph of a bah humbug, colored by a battle about whether to shorten the route and reduce the number of days it runs.

The changes would not take effect until next year, but homeowners slated to lose their waterfront seats are protesting loudly. Their crusade has led to the resignation of Boat Committee Chairman Brent Hemphill, who said a homeowner--whom he would not identify--called him and threatened to start a boycott of his Costa Mesa carpet business.

Some boaters say the controversy is taking the joy out of the 93-year-old tradition.

Kelly Nuttall, whose company will provide the lead boat for a fifth year running, was so disgusted by the call to Hemphill, he nearly pulled out as well.

“In the spirit of the holidays, and in light of what happened in New York City, this is the time we should all be pulling together, not pulling apart,” said Nuttall, president of McKinna Yachts Southern California.

Launched in 1908, Newport Beach’s boat parade has become one of the nation’s biggest nautical events of the holiday season. For seven days beginning Dec. 17, hundreds of boats--from rowboats to giant yachts--deck themselves like homecoming floats and dance across the harbor, entertaining crowds from ship to shore as they compete for prizes.

In recent years, however, organizers noticed that fewer people were riding on the boats during the last few days of the parade. A survey taken of participants and residents found that some felt the parade lasted too long and ran too many days.

So organizers decided the parade would run five days and the route would be reconfigured to slash 15 minutes to 30 minutes from the roughly three-hour tour through the harbor’s nooks and crannies. The survey found that a majority of boat owners were having trouble filling their vessels with riders for seven nights and their passengers did not like being out on the water in closed quarters for so long.

The parade is just as popular among those ashore. And many residents who would lose their front-row seats to the parade are upset. The loudest protests are coming from Lido Isle and Lido Park, two strips of land along a channel chock-full of condominiums and luxury homes.

“They’re going to take the boat parade away from us, so we’re very upset about it,” said Jean Robinson, who lives on Via Lido Sound. “We all have parties every night . . . and we all look forward to the parade.”

Robinson and her neighbors say their channel is more densely populated than any other part of the route. They believe cutting their neighborhood out of the event seems to go against the desire for more participation.

Protesters have been holding meetings and are circulating petitions. They’ve written letters to the Newport Chamber of Commerce and the Boat Committee, which organizes the parade.