Meeting stirs up opposition to Marinapark plan

Mathis Winkler

BALBOA PENINSULA -- Will the tennis courts be open to the public? How

tall will the parking structure be? Will it be lighted and will it be

lighted 24 hours a day? How about emergency access, and what about

parking and traffic in general?

These and other questions came flying at Stephen Sutherland during a

public forum on Monday after he’d barely begun to talk about his plans

for a 156-room luxury resort on the city-owned Marinapark site.

And early on during the often tense meeting that lasted for more than

two hours, it became clear that most of the 120-plus people in attendance

opposed the developer’s project.

When will there be a vote of the people, asked one woman, referring to

a citywide election that’s required for the plan because it triggers

Greenlight, the city’s new slow-growth law.

After and if the City Council approves the resort, replied Assistant

City Manager Sharon Wood.

And what happens if the people vote it down, the woman inquired.

“Then it doesn’t go forward,” Wood replied, to smiles and applause

from the audience, which was mainly made up of peninsula residents and

members of the American Legion Post 291.

Legionnaires have occupied their current harbor-front hall on the

Marinapark site at 15th Street since 1949. Sutherland proposes to build a

new hall for the group at the opposite end of the lot.

When council members entered an exclusive negotiating agreement with

Sutherland to plan the resort in November, they made it clear that the

veterans will need to agree to the move before Sutherland’s company,

Sutherland Talla Hospitality, has a chance to proceed with the project.

J.T. Tarwater, the legion’s commander, said he was willing to work

with Sutherland.

“I’m going to do all the listening I can do,” Tarwater said, adding

that he’d present his recommendations to the post’s 2,200 members at a

future date.

But “right now, it’s a cloud in the sky,” Tarwater said. “Nobody’s

come down to me with a contract.”

It’ll be at least another year before city leaders make a decision,

Wood said, adding that traffic, financial and environmental studies still

have to be prepared before then.

When someone suggested a straw vote on the project be taken during the

forum, Sutherland said he could guess the outcome.

“I know that pretty much everyone here is not happy with this,” he

said. “But there are 70,000 people in this city, and hopefully the vote

will come from that.”

Balboa Peninsula resident Virginia Herberts said she found it

difficult to follow Sutherland’s logic, with members of the peninsula’s

two main homeowners associations -- the Central Newport Beach Community

Assn. and the Peninsula Point Assn. -- already on record as opposing the

hotel.

“Your neighbors don’t want you,” Herberts said. “But you’re saying

that 70,000 other residents will want you. Tell me why?”

Sutherland countered that he felt his resort would offer residents

more than what’s there.

While the mobile home park, which covers most of the site, doesn’t

encourage the city’s residents to visit the grounds, the hotel would open

Marinapark to everyone, he said.

Some, such as Adele Mann, didn’t buy that argument.

Paying about $400 per night at the five-star resort, she wouldn’t want

“Joe Blow” to compete with her for time on the tennis courts, Mann said.

Leaving the meeting, Jane Hemlin, another Balboa Peninsula resident,

said she appreciated a four-minute, computer-generated video of the

proposed legion hall that Sutherland showed the audience.

Hemlin added that traffic and parking problems made her feel that the

hotel was “not a good idea.”

Still, she felt Sutherland didn’t get a fair chance to make his case,

she said.

“I learned that there is a lot of hostility in the neighborhood”

toward the project, Hemlin said. “I think people were listening, all

right, but not open enough to listen to the man.”

After people left, Wood said she expected nearby residents to oppose

the project.

But “for the moment, it’s got to run the course until the council

tells me to do something different,” she added.

For his part, Sutherland said the meeting hadn’t changed his attitude.

“This is a great project that has a lot of benefits for the overall

residents of Newport Beach,” he said. “I’m moving forward with it. I feel

good about it. I love it. I do.”

City officials have until mid-August to give Sutherland suggestions

for changes to his proposal. He then has 45 days to adjust the project

before he must bring it back to the city. After that, council members

will determine whether they want to continue exploring Sutherland’s

ideas.

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