Newport council OKs 3-story condo project, rejecting neighbors’ appeal
The Newport Beach City Council is standing by a plan to build a cluster of three-story condominiums in Santa Ana Heights, over the objections of nearby residents.
Neighbors had filed an appeal of the Planning Commission’s approval of the Santa Ana Avenue Cottages project, which will consist of seven condos on a roughly quarter-acre lot at the corner of Santa Ana Avenue and Mesa Drive. They cited concerns about traffic, aesthetics and three-story homes being incompatible with the neighborhood.
But the council Tuesday followed city planning staff’s recommendation to go forward with the condos, voting 6-1, with Councilwoman Diane Dixon dissenting without comment. The Planning Commission unanimously approved the project in November.
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Neighbor Dunn Voyer read from a wide-ranging letter outlining his opposition to the condos, covering concerns about potential traffic and parking problems, loss of privacy, a decline in property values, fire and flooding hazards due to the homes’ design, and not having enough street frontage for all the units’ trash bins. He emphasized what he said was the city’s potential liability in negatively affecting neighbors and predicted an “avalanche of lawsuits.”
He likened the condos’ appearance to “an Eastern European prison.”
Voyer said he’s not anti-growth — he would support a smaller group of two-story condos for the site. After the council vote, he said the development is “gonna kill that entire area.”
The property, at 20452 Santa Ana Ave., is currently occupied by a triplex built in the 1970s. The proposed condos are all two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath models with attached two-car garages. They would stand in two facing rows of attached units, four on one side and three on the other, separated by a common driveway.
City Community Development Director Kim Brandt said that while this is the first three-story development on Santa Ana Avenue, others do exist in Newport Beach, such as the waterfront Echo56 townhomes and the Ebb Tide single-family home development at Placentia Avenue and 16th Street.
Zoning regulations only address building height, not the number of stories, and the condos comply with the height maximum at 33 feet. They also meet the density restrictions. The lot, which is zoned for multifamily use, is allowed up to 11 units.
Brandt added that the 14 planned garage spaces plus four guest spots would lessen parking congestion in the area, and the shared driveway would allow ample space to safely maneuver onto Santa Ana Avenue.
The condos’ builder, Matt White, showed a recent photo of parking at the current triplex, with eight vehicles packed into the parking area. During one visit, he said, two vehicles had to back out onto Santa Ana Avenue to leave the homes. He said the new development would improve the area “tenfold.”
Councilman Jeff Herdman said the condos will fit in among the mix of existing apartments, condos and single- and two-story single-family homes.
Rob Dodman, who lives across the street from the site, disagreed. He said the council should have considered not just the letter of zoning regulations but also the character of the neighborhood.
“This is a square peg trying to go into a round hole,” Dodman said.
The property’s owner, local Realtor Adrienne Brandes, wrote in a letter that the plans had been approved by the Fire Department and the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, drainage was in accord with city codes and a traffic engineer was present at the Planning Commission meeting and would continue to work on the intersection with Orange County and neighboring Costa Mesa.
