Mayor wants Marinapark info public

June Casagrande

Voters may get the final say on whether a luxury resort is built

at Marinapark, but no matter how the project proceeds, council

members want to make sure that the public is fully informed.

At the request of Mayor Steve Bromberg, council members on Tuesday

will vote whether to create a council subcommittee to consider all

the ways the city can oversee the approval process.

“The whole idea of the ad hoc committee is to just sit down and

round-table this,” Bromberg said. “We need to look at how we’re going

to go about the process.”

Several scenarios could land the 110-room luxury resort project on

a ballot, City Atty. Bob Burnham said. The council or any voter could

initiate putting it on a ballot. The project could also trigger a

Greenlight vote depending on specifics of the hotel plan.

A voter-initiated ballot would sidestep the requirement to produce

environmental reports. Bromberg thinks that it’s important to produce

reports. Council members could likely add that requirement.

“We don’t want a situation where, if it got approved, years down

the road people would be saying they weren’t fully informed,”

Bromberg said.

The project by Sutherland Talla Hospitality has been popular with

a majority of council members and many residents, who believe that it

could reverse the slow decay of the Balboa Peninsula and transform

the area into an upscale neighborhood. Critics of the project say it

will hurt the character of the peninsula, drawing outsiders, blocking

access to the bay and unfairly ousting residents of the mobile home

park there.

Preliminary traffic reports suggest that the resort would not add

a significant number of car trips to the area.

“I’m not afraid for this to go to the ballot,” said Stephen

Sutherland, president of Sutherland Talla Hospitality. “I welcome

that. I’m confident that residents will see the positives of this

project and they will approve it.”