Newport Beach City Council narrowly approves $19.1-million bid for lecture hall

After a roughly two-hour hearing Tuesday on a pair of intertwined agenda items, the library lecture hall project in Newport Beach will move ahead, following the approval by a divided City Council of a $19.1-million construction contract.

The cost of the lecture hall, to be known as Witte Hall, will be split evenly between the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation and the city. The City Council also approved updates for the memorandum of understanding between the two parties to require the foundation to provide the lower number between $11.7 million or 50% of the total project cost — an estimated $23.5 million, including $1.4 million incurred in design costs.

“The Newport Beach Public Library Foundation is extremely pleased with the vote by the City Council to approve the memorandum of understanding with the foundation,� said Foundation chief executive Jerold Kappel. “We fully anticipate that the hall will be used significantly by not only the library and the foundation but other organizations throughout the state. It is meant to be a civic space and our goal is to be the conduit for the community to invest in that space.�

Newport Beach residents who weighed in on the project focused on whether or not the lecture hall would be a civic good or a prohibitively expensive and “lavish� public works project. Close to 190 emails were received in support and 210 against the project prior to the hearing, though this difference in opinion was not reflected during public comment Tuesday night, which leaned heavily in favor of the project.

Those speaking against it often vowed their support of the Newport Beach Public Library but raised concerns that Witte Hall would potentially duplicate resources already in place and that taxpayers would be stuck footing the bill in the event the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation could not raise the necessary funds.

In the end, the contract was passed on a narrow, 4-3 vote. Council members Noah Blom, Robyn Grant, Brad Avery and Erik Weigand took the stance that the library lecture hall would be good for Newport Beach and supported it with their votes.

Blom noted that he didn’t attend any of the lecture hall series, but he felt it was important to build infrastructure and public works projects for members in the community that had use for it even if he personally didn’t.

Grant noted the city has sufficient reserves to fund the project while also having the means to continue attending to other priorities like public safety, infrastructure and addressing homelessness in the city.

“I’m an optimist when it comes to these kinds of things because I’ve built a number of projects in this town when I was working for [Orange Coast College],� Avery said. “Every time, they were a challenge and, every time, five years later, we say, ‘We’re glad we did it then.’ And so, I think when an opportunity presents itself like this, especially the gifts from residents that really want to see this happen ... it’s a real gift.

“It’s a legacy project, and I don’t mean that in an ego way. I mean that it will take people into other worlds and to other ideas for decades and bring people together.�

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Councilwoman Lauren Kleiman, Mayor Will O’Neill and Mayor Pro Tem Joe Stapleton argued to the contrary. Though supportive of creating a cultural arts center, they saw the cost of the project as too prohibitive and they maintained it would have a fairly limited reach when compared to other city priorities.

O’Neill said there was no doubt about the passion surrounding the lecture hall, but that the project cost got “too large to allow other priorities to be forfeited.�

“We originally budgeted $4 million for the city contribution and as the scope got bigger [in 2021], we made it $6.5 million,� O’Neill pointed out. “And with a split council, we said, ‘We’ll continue to move forward’ ... but the problem with this approval is we’re going to have to allocate an additional $5 million as a floor because of the other half that’s promised.�

The mayor reminded his council colleagues of other upcoming expenditures, including increasing technology in the Newport Beach Police Department, park surveys and what could have gone toward a community center in west Newport Beach.

The Witte Hall project has been in stasis since the first wave of bids was rejected in April last year. The majority of council members, at that time, rejected all bids, arguing that the cost now well-exceeded the initially approved $13 million for final designs that had been approved in November 2021.

The project was put out to bid again in October. The $19.1-million contract awarded to AMG & Associates, Inc. Tuesday night was the lowest of the three bids received; that figure was up by roughly $2 million from the Santa Clarita firm’s initial bid last spring.

The project, as proposed, is 9,815 square feet and will seat 299 people. Talks for the library lecture hall started in 2017 with supporters arguing that the city has long outgrown its Friends Room, which was built with the library in 1994. A staff report prepared for Tuesday’s meeting said annual participation in library programming has increased from approximately 28,000 in 2009-10 to over 72,000 in 2018-19.

Construction is currently scheduled to begin this spring with completion scheduled for winter 2025. Jill Johnson-Tucker, who chairs the capital campaign for the lecture hall, confirmed Tuesday that the foundation currently has close to $9 million in cash and pledges — $7.1 million in cash, $2 million in pledges.