Beachfront hullabaloo makes waves

Alicia Robinson

Fiscal responsibility or a sweet deal?

Two proposals from Newport Beach Assemblyman Chuck DeVore would

let residents stay on state-owned land at the El Morro Village mobile

home park for up to 30 more years and would use their rent money for

state purposes -- either to help shrink the more than $8-billion

deficit or to pay for some of the multi-million dollar backlog of

state parks maintenance.

His bills to raise El Morro rents to “market rates” appear to

leave some rents lower than those at other waterfront mobile home

parks in the area.

The state, meanwhile, is already working on evicting residents to

make way for a $12-million plan to raze the mobile home park and

convert it to a public park with a 60-unit campground and a 200-space

parking lot.

One of DeVore’s bills would require an up-front payment of at

least $50 million in return for 30-year leases on the park plots, and

the other would allow an ongoing annual payment of $3.2 million with

leases of up to 30 years.

DeVore would divide the 296 lots at El Morro Village into three

price categories with the low end costing around $5,000 a year and

the high end -- the ones directly on the beach -- running at $30,000

a year or so.

He said the numbers came from a deal that never got hammered out

in a previous legislative session.

Residents now pay roughly between $4,800 and $14,400 a year, with

the average rent between $600 and $800 a month, said Ken Kramer,

superintendent of Crystal Cove State Park.

According to DeVore, the park now generates an annual profit for

the state of $1.2 million, while his bills would boost that to $3.2

million a year.

The prime spots under his bills would rent for about $2,500 a

month. By comparison, waterfront lots at Lido Peninsula Resort in

Newport Beach lease for about $3,170 a month.

“You’re talking about a lot in the middle of a highly developed

city on a highly desirable bay,” DeVore said. “I don’t know if you

can equate people living several miles down the coast to people

living on Newport Bay.”

The complaint that El Morro residents have been enjoying

state-owned land at cheap rates is just one of the old refrains that

DeVore’s bills have stirred up.

Those in favor of converting the land to public use argue that

residents have known for 25 years they would need to leave, and

people don’t have full use of the adjacent beach, because El Morro

residents and guests use up many of the 50 available parking spots.

“They’re trying to say it’s OK that we took advantage of the

system, because we’ve been doing it forever,” said Bill McDonald, a

developer who lives in Newport Beach. “I own that beach down there,

and I can’t even drive down there, park down there, [or] anything.”

On the other side, people argue El Morro only takes up a small

fraction of the public park, it provides a rare pocket of affordable

housing in Orange County, and the school at the site would be at risk

if a campground were nearby.

“I guess my opinion is that the state needs the money, and the

people who are there need homes, and it looks like they’re offering a

fair proposal at a time when the state doesn’t have the money to

spend,” said Nicki Davis, an computer account manager who lives in

Newport Coast.

DeVore said none of those claims hold any sway with him; he’s only

concerned about the state’s fiscal problems, and he’s open to

increasing the payment the bills would require from El Morro

residents.

“I’m not interested in competing emotional arguments,” DeVore

said. “All I’m doing is maximizing the money from a very valuable

public asset.”

People would likely be willing to pay more than DeVore is

proposing now. Real estate agent Kent McNaughton said he paid $1,800

a month to rent a trailer at El Morro in the winter about three or

four years ago, and he’d go considerably higher today.

“Personally I would pay $4,000 a month to have a trailer down

there,” he said.

It’s not clear how DeVore’s bills will be received in the

Assembly, but once the land does become a public park, campsites will

be nearly impossible to come by.

Of all state campgrounds, “the coastal ones are in the highest

demand,” said Roy Stearns, deputy communications director for the

state parks department. “Every year, the demand far outstrips the

supply.”

The bills could be heard in the Assembly’s Water, Wildlife and

Parks committee on March 13.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers government and politics. She may be

reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at alicia.robinson

@latimes.com.