SUSAN CAUSTIN -- Community Commentary

The Planning Commission has spoken. Whether we want it or not, Newport

Beach is on track to approve a 470-room hotel andtimeshare resort with

the largest conference center in the city.

The proposed Dunes Hotel will be built on public land and will

negatively impact the most traffic sensitive intersection in this city,

Bayside Drive and East Coast Highway. Although the city assures us that

no significant increase in traffic congestion will occur, many project

opponents believe that the traffic impacts have been underestimated.

It is exactly this type of situation that has led citizens to qualify

the Greenlight Protection from Traffic and Density Initiative for the

November ballot. The Planning Commission promised not to approve this

project unless it was “far superior” to the previously approved 275-room

family inn. So, what is this far superior benefit to the residents of

Newport Beach? About two cents per day per resident of additional revenue

to the city, or a total of $523,000 per year.

In representative government, citizen input is supposed to balance the

lobbying power of developers. The Planning Commission received hundreds

of letters about the project. Dover Shores retained an attorney to

comment on the many inadequacies of the environmental impact report.

Opponents have spent hundreds of hours researching documents and

providing feedback to the Planning Commission on potential problems with

this project. The commission approved the plan despite this community

opposition.

Because increased traffic will be the most direct adverse impact most

of us will experience, much attention was directed toward the traffic

study. The initial document produced by the Dunes simply said that there

would be no adverse impacts of any kind from the proposed hotel. It took

a challenge from Stop Polluting Our Newport’s attorney to convince the

city that a full report evaluating the impacts of the proposed hotel --

including applying it to the city’s Traffic Phasing Ordinance -- was

necessary.

This project will add 4,200 trips per day to Newport Beach traffic,

but the project was applied to the Traffic Phasing Ordinance based on

only a few hundred trips per day. This is because the city staff allowed

the Dunes to subtract trip “credits” for the previously approved hotel,

using numbers vigorously contested by opponents. Interestingly, a review

of traffic studies from prior large developments built in Newport Beach

over the past few years found that most of them were given trip credits

that allowed them to minimize their calculated traffic impact.

But the most astounding fact was that the long-range traffic

projections predicted the addition of hotel traffic would improve

congestion at 36 major intersections in Newport Beach. Conversations with

city traffic engineers revealed that the computer model for long-term

traffic effects assumes that no new traffic will enter the city from the

new resort.

Instead, existing traffic is expected to be redistributed, and so will

reduce traffic at distant intersections. Thus, for the purposes of our

city decision-makers, this hotel will have no noticeable impact on

traffic.

With traffic models like this, how can a developer ever lose? Only the

residents lose, since we have to deal with actual traffic instead of

projected traffic. Manipulating traffic numbers makes projects look

better on paper, and common sense is thrown out the window.

The city’s ordinance has been in the news recently because Citizens

for Traffic Solutions is trying to use it to counter Greenlight’s

Protection from Traffic and Density Initiative in November’s election.

Greenlight approaches the traffic and density issues of our city by

requiring a vote of the people before major developments needing a

general plan amendment can be approved, and it is designed to give voters

the final say over projects like the Dunes hotel.

The ordinance is not the solution to our traffic problems, especially

as it is currently applied. The bottom line is that working within the

system simply didn’t work.

Our City Council members have commented that residents need to trust

city leaders to make the right decisions for the city, but trust needs to

be earned.

After reflecting on an admission by Planning Commission chairperson Ed

Selich that “there is no agreement done [by the city] that can’t be

changed,” I think I’ll take my chances with the Greenlight Initiative.

* SUSAN CAUSTIN is a Newport Beach resident who advocates for

environmental issues.