Council to discuss proposed city hall site today

Building a new city hall on a planned park site next to Newport Beach’s main library would require a public vote one way or another, according to city officials.

City Council members today will discuss whether to put the question of a city hall at the 12.8-acre Avocado Avenue park site on the November ballot.

Mayor Don Webb has suggested a nonbinding advisory vote on the issue, but if voters like the idea, they’d need to formally approve either a charter amendment or a vote under Measure S, also known as Greenlight. The Greenlight vote would be required because the proposed building’s 72,000 square feet would exceed the 40,000-square-foot threshold that triggers a public vote.

The council would have to decide by Friday to get something on the ballot this fall.

After a several-month process of evaluating sites, the council was poised to rebuild at the existing City Hall site on the Balboa Peninsula. Council members in late 2005 voted to take the library park site out of consideration because it had long been promised as a park.

But some residents and the council took a closer look when architect Bill Ficker proposed a new city hall on the library site, which he touted as a more central location. It also could be built and occupied, but at the existing site employees would have to move out during construction and then back in.

Whether a majority of council members will want to put the city hall to an advisory vote is questionable. The council appeared split on the issue at an earlier meeting, and the one member who was then absent ? Tod Ridgeway ? opposes such a vote.

“What will it accomplish?” Ridgeway said Monday. “This is about honoring our past representation on that property, period.”

Using the park site as a city hall also would require approval from the Irvine Co., which donated the land to the city as part of a 1993 agreement.

Other issues the council could discuss include a potential parkland deficit and traffic issues associated with putting a city hall on the Avocado Avenue property.

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