Group fights city hall move

Three members of a prominent Newport Beach environmental group will head the opposition to a ballot measure that would build a new city hall next to the central library.

Allan Beek, Jan Vandersloot and Jean Watt of Stop Polluting Our Newport are organizing the fight against the city hall measure. It would change the city charter to say city hall — now on the Balboa Peninsula — will be built on a 12.8-acre, city-owned parcel on Avocado Avenue that has been promised as a park since 1992.

So far the battle is one of slogans. Bill Ficker, leading proponent of the city hall measure, is peddling the idea of “city hall in the park,” while opponents hope to convince voters that “parks are priceless.”

Stop Polluting Our Newport “has been on record in favor of having the park and not a city hall on that site for a year or more,” Beek said Wednesday.

He sees lots of holes in Ficker’s plan. For instance, he said, “They’re choosing to build on one of the worst possible sites around. There are massive grading requirements.”

City leaders already are looking into property just a block away where an Orange County Transportation Authority facility is, and Beek argues that’s a better alternative.

He and his backers are drafting a letter they’ll send, first to members of Stop Polluting Our Newport and the slow-growth group Greenlight. A second letter will urge the community at large not to sign city hall ballot petitions.

Ficker said he’s not surprised to have opponents, and he thinks their arguments are largely without merit.

For example, people have called the park property “unbuildable” because of drainage problems that also afflict the library. But Ficker, an architect, said he has inspected the library basement and not seen signs of flooding, and his studies of the park land show “it’s an excellent site on which to build.”

Some are not choosing sides in the battle. Though City Council members Leslie Daigle and Don Webb and Mayor Steve Rosansky voted to consider the park land for city hall, only Webb has signed the ballot petition, and none of the three plan to campaign for it.

Greenlight will not get formally involved either, said group spokesman Phil Arst, though individual members may work against the ballot measure.

It is the second time in three years that Newport Beach voters face a ballot measure pitting a park against some other land use. Leaders on both sides seem a little disturbed that things have come to this.

“I guess what bothers me is why people would be so cynical,” Ficker said. “I don’t know why of all people [Stop Polluting Our Newport] would attack the democratic process.”

For Beek, the debate is extremely close to home.

“My own brother and I are on opposite sides, and I don’t quite understand where he’s coming from,” he said.