City going for control of coast

June Casagrande

Once the Local Coastal Plan is completed and approved, developers

will be able to go to the city instead of the Coastal Commission for

some permits; nearly two dozen commercial property owners who are

supposed to provide public access to the water will be forced to do

so; and a $1,000-a-month fine the city now pays will stop.

But that could take a while.

City Councilman Tod Ridgeway, who chairs the committee working to

create the document, said that the city might be able to apply for

Coastal Commission approval of the document by April, at which time a

$1,000-a-month late charge that began in June would end.

The Local Coastal Plan is basically a local interpretation of the

Coastal Act. That act provides for public access to and preservation

of the nation’s coastal areas. The document applies the goals of the

federal act to the local coastal zone. Though that usually refers to

all the land 1,000 yards inland from the shore, Newport’s winding

Back Bay means that in some parts of town, the coastal zone extends

all the way to the Corona del Mar Freeway.

No development in those areas is allowed without a permit, with

lots of exceptions made for private homeowners to build on their

residential properties. Until now, the California Coastal Commission

has been the agency responsible for issuing those permits. Once the

city’s Local Coastal Plan is complete, the city will be able to issue

those permits instead.

“It expedites things,” city planner Patrick Alford said.

“Normally, you have to get local approval first then go to the state.

We will be able to handle it in one hearing.”

In broad terms, the document deals with several important areas of

the city’s coastal resources: access to the coast; protection of

resources there, including animal life and water quality; development

permits; and protection of land forms like coastal bluffs.

Parcel maps for about 23 properties in the city show that those

properties are supposed to provide public access to the coast but do

not do so. Most of those properties are commercial and in the

Mariner’s Mile area, Ridgeway said. Once the document is finalized,

the city will begin to enforce this requirement.

“This is a very public access-oriented committee,” Ridgeway said.

“We took a position that public access is critical to the integrity

of the act and it is critical to our city.”

The city committee drafting the document is in the process of

considering the comments and concerns of a number of city and other

agencies, including the city’s economic development committee and

staff members of the California Coastal Commission. Once the draft

coastal plan has been refined again, the city will apply to the

commission for approval of the land use plan. Once the commission

signs off on that, the city must come up with an implementation plan

for putting guidelines into practice. The Coastal Commission must

sign off on that portion of the document, as well.

In their last revision of the document, city officials decided to

omit Banning Ranch from the draft Local Coastal Plan, saying that

there’s too much uncertainty in that undeveloped parcel to be able to

apply sensible rules.