Opposition builds to Lido hotel plan

June Casagrande

Store owners worried that hotel developers are aiming to bulldoze

their shops are seizing on an opportunity to battle any razing

presented by a recent Planning Commission meeting.

The owners in Lido Marina Village are writing letters to Planning

Department staff saying they’re concerned about how wording in the

proposed Local Coastal Plan could affect the future of a hotel

project planned in the village.

The proposed Local Coastal Plan, a document required by the state

to govern all the city’s coastal zones, says Lido Marina Village

should be for “visitor-serving” uses. The city’s current general plan

describes the area as a place for retail, service, recreation and

marine businesses.

“Both uses allow hotel development,” explained Patrick Alford of

the city’s Planning Department. “There’s not a great distinction

between the two. It’s just a question of what the emphasis is.”

That emphasis worries some property owners in Lido Marina Village.

“Visitor-serving” is the buzz term that might allow a developer to

build a hotel on the Marinapark mobile home site on the peninsula --

a plan that remains one of the city’s most hotly debated issues.

The Planning Commission held a hearing on the proposed Local

Coastal Plan last week. After hearing concerns from about a dozen

community members on a wide range of issues -- everything from eel

grass to an oceanfront boardwalk -- Planning Commissioners decided to

postpone the matter until April 22 to give staff time to consider the

concerns.

Lido business owners are using the time to get in their two cents.

“I’m not necessarily opposed to a hotel here. Done right, it could

be a good thing. What I’m opposed to is forcing out all the shops in

order to put a hotel here,” said Jon Birer, owner of Charlie’s Locker

on Via Lido.

Representatives of Laguna Beach-based Griffin Realty Corp. have

approached City Council members individually to present their plans

for a 75-room hotel and about two-dozen time-share condominiums.

Because plans have not yet been filed with the city, details of the

project are not public.

Business owners along Via Lido have been approached by a partner

firm of Griffin, who asked them to sell their land. Birer and Douglas

Dreyer, owner of the building at 3416 Via Lido, both said they had

been asked to sell their land. Both said no.

“A business I’ve been running successfully for 30 years is worth a

lot more to me than just the land it’s on,” Birer said.

Despite getting such flat refusals, the developers have continued

to lay out their plans to council members for a project on the site

of Birer and Dreyer’s property. This has caused some to worry that

eminent domain--an almost always controversial process through which

a city can buy up land at a fixed, market price for either public use

of for a use determined to benefit the community -- could be in the

works. The city has never used eminent domain for a commercial

project.

A representative of the developer was out of the country and could

not be reached on Friday.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

[email protected].