The ‘shoe’ doesn’t fit the ‘foot’

DON KROTEE

It is always a great pleasure to see John Huffman speak or read what

he has written, and as an attendee at St. Andrew’s Church, his warmth

and abilities as a speaker are quite at the top of anyone’s game. I

also regard John as a friend, who recently joined our community and

myself to play golf in a benefit honoring Newport Harbor High School.

Playing golf on a Monday, when it benefits anyone other than myself,

eases my guilt.

In his Pilot commentary Saturday, Huffman, the church’s pastor,

observed: “‘Promise’ was never that church wouldn’t expand.” I

immediately imagined Pilot columnist June Casagrande admonishing the

Pilot’s double negative in the headline, but I doubt that any such

thing will occur. I suppose it was important for Huffman to come to

his own rescue, and his words are up to his usual lofty standard.

However, being the president of one of the two community

associations in which St. Andrew’s plans the church’s latest

Wal-Mart-sized expansion, Huffman and myself enjoy and occasionally

laugh about our differences. In regard to a “promise” in 1982

contributing to the belief that St. Andrew’s would never again

expand, I’d have to say first that I wasn’t there. So, all we can do

is read what’s written and make our own conclusions. In that regard,

I can say that Corki Rawlings’ recollection of the promise printed in

the Pilot commentary, “A ‘promise’ that won’t be soon forgotten,”

Friday, was made to the city planning staff and the Pilot in writing.

And it was confirmed in writing and signed by another witness, Pete

Gendron, who was in the room when whatever was pledged.

Evelyn Hart, in her March 6, 2003 letter to the City Council,

wrote: “My recollection of the public record and approval, back in

the early ‘80s, was that after the tooth pulling of this often

embattled [conditional-use permit], and the eventual settlement that

the church could expand then, was that approval would be the final

straw of development.”

For me, I love them all as my neighbors, and I’ll adopt some of

Planning Commissioner Larry Tucker’s public wisdom when he reminds

us: We are all here, now, to do what is best for everyone -- not to

decide what happened 22 years ago. So in that regard, maybe it does

not matter too much.

What does matter is that when the readers take in Huffman’s

article that proclaims “the physical shoe of the land limitation has

told the foot how large it can get,” the readers should know that the

“shoe” has historically never listened. St. Andrew’s is wholly unique

in that it resides deep in a residential community and has been

expanded several times, most recently in 1984 to an unprecedented,

shoelace-busting 104,440 square feet and on land zoned as

residential.

Our communities would be grateful if Huffman could have a chat

with the “shoe” and the “foot” and have St. Andrew’s, as the Planning

Commission has recommended, make a current bad situation better. He

also fails to mention that St. Andrew’s today is before the city

asking for a general-plan amendment, a zone change and a

conditional-use permit, an underground parking garage, school

district permission to use property that doesn’t belong to them and

an additional 21,714 square feet, all of which would get rid of the

now useless residential (shoe) zone. The communities will present the

reasons, respectfully, that this type of planning will make a bad

situation worse.

When Huffman preaches in his defense that “the goal is not to be

bigger but to be better,” he is truly in his element, in full selling

mode. I run into parishioners who think: “This is a remodel, and it’s

no bigger.” One might consider the facts in the application that

reflect more than 100,000 square feet of parking and related

underground garage and 21,714 of new square feet to be added. It’s

obvious that the true goal of St. Andrew’s is to get bigger. But when

you consider its original general-plan amendment asked for 39,950

square feet, a shade under a Greenlight public vote, then it should

have been obvious that it not only wanted “bigger,” it wanted to have

only 14 people vote -- commission and council -- and no one else to

notice. How much is enough?

As the Planning Commission goes to vote Thursday, it will be

required once more to hear the story of the “foot” and the “shoe” and

preside over it, becoming elastic once more at the expense of two of

the city’s most lovely and quiet communities. The lofty goal of

making the communities better won’t be affected by who said what

yesterday, but rather by what is, on that date, recommended to the

City Council. This should serve as a wake-up call to the communities

of this city.

* DON KROTEE is a resident of Newport Beach and president of the

Newport Heights Improvement Assn.