Wording plays part in Brewing Co. debate

Is the current spat over the Newport Beach Brewing Co. based partly on an error city officials made more than a decade ago?

That’s the question the city and restaurant owners continue to debate a week after the Brewing Co. filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the changes the City Council imposed on it this summer. The council ruled the restaurant had to restrict its dining space before 5 p.m. on the weekends to free up parking spaces in the neighborhood — and the council justified that decision with a clause in the restaurant’s use permit that some said was worded incorrectly 14 years ago.

The use permit, which the City Council approved in fall 1993, decrees that the restaurant limit its public area to 1,500 square feet before 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The following sentence, however, states that the restaurant’s public area beyond 1,500 feet should be closed off by a barrier before 5 p.m. “daily.”

The council voted 5-1 in August to modify the Brewing Co.’s use permit and impose the restriction seven days a week.

Senior Planner James Campbell, in his staff report to the council, said the original language in the permit was erroneous, since the California Coastal Commission, which approved the Brewing Co. in 1993, implied in its own rules that the area should be closed every day.

A number of city officials now argue that someone — the council, the Coastal Commission or both — made a mistake 14 years ago, while the Brewing Co. camp denies any error occurred and claims the city is harping on a technicality as a ploy to rein in liquor sales in the Balboa neighborhood.

“They have a theory of what they want [the permit] to say, and the plain meaning that has been implemented for 14 years isn’t what they desire,” said Stephen Miles, the restaurant’s attorney. “What they desire now is to damage the Brewing Co.”

Miles believes the word “daily” in the second sentence of the clause refers to Monday through Friday, not seven days a week. A number of city officials, however, argue the council made the right move in changing the permit, saying the “Monday through Friday” specification never should have made it into the guidelines. Meg Vaughn, a staff analyst for the California Coastal Commission, said in a May letter to the Newport Beach Planning Department that the commission’s rule applied every day.

A letter the Planning Department sent to the commission in 1993, however, spelled out the weekdays-only clause, and that language ended up in the Brewing Co.’s use permit.

“I’m not sure how that discrepancy happened,” said Assistant City Atty. Aaron Harp. “It should have restricted it seven days a week.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].