Newport Planning Commission to Entertain Grossly Illegal Project

Many of you know what Newport’s Greenlight Voter Initiative is, but for those who don’t, a quick recap: Greenlight is a citizen-initiated restriction on building that prohibits more than 100 homes (“units”) to be added to any statistical area (like, say, Newport Center) every 10 years– unless they get voter approval.  It was put in place by activists who wanted to prevent Newport from becoming the next Miami– traffic, skyrises, blocked views… you get the picture.  Greenlight has measurements in place for both residential and non-residential building (like hotel rooms) but has no provisions to convert a hotel into residential units– but someone (Irvine Company) wanted to convert 79 unbuilt hotels into residences.  Fine, right?  79 is clearly less than 100– so there’s no vote needed, we just now have only 21 more residential units that we can build, instead of 100.  Any reasonable person person may find this to be fair.

Cool!  Pretty lame article, right?  Well, here’s where it gets interesting…

Now, the city is hearing proposals to build a condo unit in place of the carwash in Fashion Island, here:

This car wash wants to add 49 residential units in a skyrise.  Well, 49 is greater than the 21 units left over, so this has to go to a Greenlight vote… BUT…

The city claims that because those previous 79 units were “converted” from hotels to condos, that they magically don’t count for Greenlight– but again, the conversion processes were not covered anywhere in Greenlight and bypassing the limit is bypassing the very spirit in which Greenlight was passed.  The city claims it amended the general plan to account for those 79 additional units without… amending the general plan.  I’m dead serious, that’s what they say.

The city maintains it still has 100 units left under Greenlight, and that if anyone wants to bypass the wildly popular Greenlight, all you need to do is to get a hotel grant– you don’t even need to build the hotel– then have those entitlements switched from hotels into condos.  Viola!

Now look, I’m probably more pro-property-rights than anyone I know, but we clearly have Greenlight here to tame developers thirst for building sky-scraping condo units on every block.  I might not have voted for it but THE CITY MUST FOLLOW LAW.  If we allow the City of Newport to blatantly violate the citizen Voter Initiatives that our activists took so much time and effort to pass, then we must accept that even with a voter initiative, neither our views nor our laws matter to our city leaders.  They will have proven themselves to be purchased by land developers… and we, as citizens, are merely “in the way”.

The Planning Commission is having a study session tonight on this very topic at 6:30pm.  The address is at 100 Civic Center Dr, Newport Beach, CA 92660.
Or, you can email them and demand they follow the law with the Greenlight Initiative, here:
kkramer@newportbeachca.gov
tbrown@newportbeachca.gov
pkoetting@newportbeachca.gov
bhillgren@newportbeachca.gov
rlawler@newportbeachca.gov
eweigand@newportbeachca.gov
pzak@newportbeachca.gov
bwisneski@newportbeachca.gov

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