Marinapark is not closed to public

This is in reference to the recent comments on the Forum pages by

Steve Sutherland and Jennifer Dabbs concerning the Marinapark site.

Sutherland should know better because he has done a great deal of

research on the existing park. Dabbs has obviously never visited the

park, but is simply parroting Sutherland’s words. Both would like the

public to believe that the mobile home park presents a fortification

through which no one may trespass to gain access to the bay.

The fact is, as Tom Billings has so ably said, there is easy beach

access. On the south end of the property there is an 8-foot-wide

walkway leading straight from Las Arenas Park to the harbor with

absolutely no gate whatsoever to go through. On the north end

(between 18th and 19th streets) there is metered parking along West

Bay Street where one can easily walk onto the beach to enjoy the

entire stretch between 19th Street and the American Legion at the

opposite end.

Should one desire to use the concrete walkway that fronts the

mobile home park, there is nothing to stop them. The gates are open

24 hours a day, as are the small gates leading from the walkway to

the sand in front of each grouping of homes. The only restrictions

are that there be pedestrian traffic only -- no bicycles or

skateboards.

Sutherland said that the mobile homeowners have put up a fence, a

hedge and gates along the front of the walkway to keep the public

out. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the city of

Newport Beach itself installed the low chain-link fence and shrubbery

about 50 years ago because the walkway at that time was a private

part of the mobile home park. Its purpose was to provide access for

the front trailers’ installation and removal. There was only one

small gate in the fence at the time to allow the tenants access to

the sand. It wasn’t until about 25 years later that the tenants

themselves got permission from the city and took up a collection

among themselves to add the additional gates to provide better beach

access.

About 18 years ago, the city decided to open up the walkway to the

public after its original purpose became obsolete, since by then,

modern mobile homes were too wide to pass down the 10-foot walkway in

front of the coaches. At that time, the city installed the current

“Pedestrian Traffic Only” signs. The public has been and is welcome

to use not only the walkway, but any of the small gates through which

they can step out onto the sand to the bay front. There are no locks.

There is no cement sea wall. There is a short wooden retaining wall

to keep soil from the beach.

Far from being the elitist group that Sutherland attempts to

portray, residents at Marinapark enjoy seeing public use of the

beach. The Boy Scouts routinely use it for recreational purposes

during the summer, as do various private camps and sailing classes.

There is an annual outrigger club event held there that takes up the

entire length of the beach. Individuals and small groups come on foot

and by boat; neighbors walk their dogs along its shores. In fact, the

residents made the suggestion to the city at one time that a sign be

installed on the Arenas Park property to indicate that the beach is

accessible via the walkway. This suggestion fell on deaf ears.

Sutherland should not try to demonize the tenants at Marinapark,

who are nice people, in an attempt to sell this ill-fated scheme to

other residents of Newport Beach. Feeding this kind of falsehood to

the public is not an honorable course of action.

BETTY J. BERKSHIRE

Balboa Peninsula

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Betty Berkshire is a resident of the Marinapark

mobile home park.