Newport Beach Doesn’t Mind Growth (in Others’ Backyards)

Newport Beach has spoken. The city doesn’t want a 10-story office building near John Wayne Airport, thank you, because it would create too much traffic. It does, however, very much want a new international airport several miles away, across the 405 Freeway, that would serve 18 million passengers a year.

So as not to increase traffic, most of those passengers apparently would walk or hitchhike to the airport.

This, at least, is how I read the vote last week in that lovely, self-protective enclave by the sea.

I sense a city conflicted.

With nothing better to do on a pleasant Tuesday, 10,500 Newporters sauntered off to the polls last week and, in an exercise of their newfound power to raze high-rises before they’re built, 6,250 of them nixed a proposed Koll Center expansion project.

In response, an aghast Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce is actively considering shutting its offices and moving to Afghanistan.

Last week’s plebiscite was the voters’ first chance to dress up and play City Council since passing the Greenlight Initiative a year ago, giving them the final say on major developments in the city. For a day, Newport Beach had 10,500 City Council members.

They think that’s a good thing.

The vote was significant, because by all reckoning the project would have won council support and moved on to fruition were there no such thing as Greenlight. It’s still unclear to me why a Greenlight Initiative can stop a project. In my town, green means go. I guess Newporters didn’t want a reputation as a city that supported a Red Light initiative.

No matter how you color it, though, the Koll project came to a screeching halt.

You have to wonder whether other Orange County cities will take a cue from this. This is, after all, a county where people are pretty satisfied with what they have, while feeling that developers have run the show far too long. That combustible mix can cause Greenlight fever.

There have been stirrings. Brea voters barely rejected a similar initiative last November. And, applying the same general sentiment, a group of Costa Mesa residents is deciding whether to put to a vote the City Council’s decision last week to build a commercial and housing development near the 405 and Harbor Boulevard.

You’d think developers would hold sway in Republican-dominated Newport Beach, but its existing wealth and scenic beauty probably militate against any perceived need to add more.

In short, they got theirs. Why do they need another office tower?

It may sound like I’m steamed over the Koll project’s demise.

I’m not. In this crazy world, the company’s problems don’t amount to a hill of beans to me. I’m just puzzled as to why, in the name of traffic concerns, it’s enlightened to thwart an office building while at the same time supporting an international airport a stone’s throw away.

No city has been more supportive of the proposed El Toro airport than Newport Beach, increased traffic or not. But that would be mostly other people’s traffic, not Newport Beach’s. Plus, anything that takes traffic away from John Wayne Airport is good for Newport Beach.

So, it’s almost as if voters spoke out of the other side of their mouths Tuesday.

Fine by me. People do it all the time, including city councils. But let’s not trumpet an international airport up the road while claiming that reduced traffic volume guides our hometown public policy.

Let’s not even call last week’s vote “public policy.” While the outcome was a clear win for Greenlighters, the 10,500 who voted compares with the 29,000 who voted last November when Greenlight was approved.

The shrunken turnout last week suggests that these special elections will be determined by even smaller fragments of the populace than what we get in general elections.

Didn’t we invent elective government for things like this?

Not to worry. Greenlight supporters said last year (and last week) that they aren’t anti-growth or anti-business.

No reason to doubt them. All they did last week was scuttle an office tower near MacArthur and Jamboree.

I hear, meanwhile, they can’t wait to share some of their exciting ideas for expansion of booths at the Fun Zone.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.