COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Park is best for city hall site

I support Bill Ficker’s plan to put a new city hall on part of the vacant city-owned land uphill from the Central Library between MacArthur Boulevard and Avocado.

Most real estate decisions start with, and are most heavily weighted by, location. Unless there is another city hall site within our city limits that the city has missed, the Central Library site is the best location for a new city hall, which should serve our residents the next 50 years. When viewed on a city map, the site is located almost in the middle of our city boundaries, which are not likely to change in the future. To again build a new city hall on the present site on the Balboa Peninsula is simply wrong and is thinking backward in time to when the peninsula was the center of Newport Beach, unless there are major obstacles in building our new city hall next to the Central Library.

Last December I voted not to include the library site in the list to be reviewed by the city hall site committee. I did so because I was wrong on these critical assumptions: