Newport considers additional parking regulations for construction sites

The Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday will consider expanding parking regulations for contractors rebuilding or renovating homes.

Newport has more than 2,000 active building permits of all sizes citywide. With those projects come workers — contractors and subcontractors in fleets of trucks, plus large bins to hold construction waste — often parking on the street, crowding out neighbors.

A set of proposed rule additions would tighten up when builders can work and for how long and requires builders to make more project information available.

The four-pronged proposal includes the following:

• Requiring projects to be completed within five years. The city currently doesn’t have a time limit for finishing construction.
• Barring “loud noise construction activity” on Saturdays during the summer, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This is when parking is most crunched citywide as visitors flock to the beach and harbor, and cars spill from parking lots and metered spaces into residential streets. The city already bars construction on Sundays year-round.
• Requiring builders to develop a construction parking management plan that would include the number of vehicles expected at the site, additional off-street parking locations and materials delivery schedules prior to receiving a building permit. Only new construction — scraping a plot to rebuild — would require a plan. Remodels would not.
• Requiring that information signage that lists contact information be posted on site fencing.

The city had 2,458 active building permits as of Friday with a total valuation of $646.4 million. Corona del Mar had the most, followed closely by the Balboa Peninsula and Lido Isle.

This includes commercial, residential and city facility projects of all sizes, but one-off home construction is particularly common in Newport. A city-maintained map of the permits shows them clustered in residential streets, and neighbors.

Tuesday’s council meeting starts at 5 p.m. with a study session, followed by the regular session at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 100 Civic Center Drive.