Greenlight files suit against Newport

S.J. Cahn

NEWPORT BEACH--The Greenlight fight that’s been waging in City Hall

is headed for another battleground: the courts.

Leaders of the city’s controlled-growth movement have filed a

lawsuit against the city, charging that Newport Beach leaders are

trying to evade the law requiring a public vote for any major general

plan amendments.

At the crux of the suit is a disagreement over how the Greenlight

law, approved in 2000, judges construction or expansion of hotels.

Now the basis for whether a vote is triggered is the number of

hotel rooms. Greenlight leaders, who’ve acknowledged they “missed

something” when formulating the law three years ago, want size added

to the equation.

“The entire thrust of the lawsuit is to preserve the right of the

people to vote on major general plan amendments,” said Greenlight

spokesman Phil Arst.

Typically, the Greenlight law requires a public vote on projects

that exceed what is allowed in the general plan by 40,000 square

feet. Hotels are an exception -- as they long have been in matters of

city planning. The number of rooms, by city reckoning, is a better

measure of how many people would walk through a hotel’s doors than

sheer size alone.

Arst argues differently, pointing out that a small hotel with few

enough rooms -- 200 or so -- to avoid triggering a Greenlight vote

still could include a large convention center or high number of

conference rooms that would ratchet up traffic significantly.

He added that the Greenlight committee felt forced into the

lawsuit by delays in promised negotiations with the city over the

issue and by a possible statute of limitations -- depending on the

interpretation of the law -- to its ability to go to court.

City Councilman Don Webb, who noted he’d not seen the lawsuit and

had been alerted to its filing in an e-mail, disputed that the

negotiations were so far off target.

“We’re working through it,” he said, adding that Greenlight

officials had only recently raised concerns about deficiencies in the

law’s hotel guidelines.

Webb, long the city’s public works director, also argued that

judging a hotel by the number of rooms is the best measure of how it

might affect traffic, the number of employees or most other planning

issues.

He also noted that Arst’s hypothetical hotel with few rooms but a

large conference area doesn’t exist in Newport Beach, and, if one

were proposed, it would get appropriate scrutiny.

“I don’t understand why Greenlight feels they had to file a

lawsuit,” he said.

The measure’s history may provide some answer. In its successful

run-up to approval, two issues stood center stage: traffic and a

proposed luxury hotel at the Newport Dunes -- which Arst called an

example of a hotel planned for a few rooms but a large conference

area.

Since then, while there was a brief, heated debate in 2001 about

expansion of the Koll Center by 250,000 feet that voters ultimately

denied, most of the rhetoric of Greenlight has swirled around a

proposed 110-room luxury hotel at Marinapark on the Balboa Peninsula.

A November vote is expected for that plan, but the City Council

has put forth the vote on its own and not through Greenlight’s

mechanisms -- yet another sore point.

Hotels, in other words, have clearly been a hot-button to this

debate, a matter seemingly made worse in recent months by the

coincidental gray area revolving around how they would be measured

under the law.

And there is one issue more: Arst pointed out that Marinapark and

a proposed hotel development for Lido Marina Village, which is just

in the most embryonic stages, are on the city’s waterfront.

“They both will occupy precious waterfront,” he said. “Without the

intensity criteria in the Greenlight law, neither would come up for a

vote. The public should have a voice on what is happening to our

bay-front.”

For that reason, he said, any attempt by the city to circumvent

the law had to be addressed.

Arst did leave open the possibility that Greenlight would work

with city leaders to alter the law’s guidelines regarding hotels even

as the lawsuit works its way through the courts.

That may be a place to start, of sorts.

“We need to work it out, but I don’t think it needs to be worked

out in court,” Webb said.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He may be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at [email protected].