Sports Agent Cries Foul Over Plan to Cut Trees

Newport Beach sports agent Dwight Manley, who represents Los Angeles Laker Karl Malone and other NBA stars, has turned his attention to 400 rising prospects in his own neighborhood. They all go by the same name: podocarpus gracilior.

Better known as fern pines, the trees are to be cut down along the sidewalks of Pelican Crest in Newport Coast, the gated community where Manley and Malone both own homes.

The Pelican Crest Community Assn.’s board voted 3 to 2 this month to remove the trees. Manley, whose wife is one of the board members who opposed the move, filed a lawsuit this week seeking to reverse the decision.

A hearing is scheduled in three weeks before Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell L. Wilkinson. Until then, the trees will stay put.

“I’ve invested a lot of money in an exclusive neighborhood with a lot of character and ambience,” Manley said Friday. “And the trees are an important part of that character.”

Manley’s crusade is ruffling some feathers in Pelican Crest, a neighborhood perched on hills overlooking the Pacific where homes go for $5 million and more.

Some residents believe the trees, which can grow up to 60 feet, are unattractive and cheapen a landscape that is lush with prettier species, including weeping bottlebrush, Italian cypress, Australian tea trees, willows and palms.

“The developer really put ... what I call an economical type of tree into an upscale community,” said board President Larry Noggle. “And people have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on nice palms, olive trees -- really top-notch type of landscaping -- only to have that detracted by inexpensive parkway trees.”

Noggle said the board first considered removing the trees in the spring, but a few members got cold feet and wanted to first survey residents to make sure a majority agreed.

A straw poll was mailed out in March.

Of the 58 who responded, 45 favored removal and 13 wanted the trees to remain or replaced with something else, Noggle said.

Manley, who bought his lot four years ago and next week plans to move into the home he and his wife had built, said he never got the survey and that it was deliberately skewed anyway.

A copy of the survey letter shows that before asking residents for their vote, it says, “There is little doubt that these substandard trees have not matured well enough to give the community the appropriate appearance we all desire.”

The survey was inaccurate, Manley said.

Manley took his own grass-roots survey, knocking on the doors of 22 of his neighbors. Most of them were unaware of the move to get rid of the trees. Twenty were opposed to the idea and two supported it, he said.

Manley acknowledged that some of the fern pines appear scrawny but will look better once they mature, as they have in nearby Pelican Hill, a community that is 10 years older than Pelican Crest.

“It’s not an issue there,” he said. “They love them.”

Arborists and other landscape experts should be consulted about decisions that affect the environment, Manley said.

The county should also be involved because it approved the development plan in the first place.

For a man more than familiar with difficult negotiations, Manley is clearly frustrated by a board he says is “just dictating to us like we’re children.”

“What the board does should reflect what the community wants, not what a few people have decided to do,” he said.

Fortunately, Manley said he has a few neighbors on his side. One of them is Jim Jennard, founder of the Oakley sunglasses company. Another is Malone.

“He’s a mountain man,” Manley said of Malone. “He loves trees. He’s 100% in support.”