Planned 13-story condo towers in Newport are ‘opposite’ of Museum House, manager says, but skeptics aren’t sold

A high-rise condominium and retail development proposed for a commercial pocket of Newport Beach is unlike the now-scuttled Museum House condo tower that gripped local attention a year ago, the manager of the new project told the audience during a forum Monday evening at the Newport Beach Central Library.

The Koll Center Residences would group 260 luxury condominiums of 1,800 to 3,100 square feet in three 13-story buildings at Von Karman Avenue and Birch Street near John Wayne Airport. The maximum height would be 160 feet.

The project also would include 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, a parking garage and a 1.17-acre public park. It would take about 4½ years to build out.

A typical 1,800-square-foot unit would cost about $1.5 million to $2 million.

Michael Murphy, project manager for the proposal by Irvine-based developer Shopoff Realty Investments, said it is the “exact opposite” of Museum House, which he called “spot zoning.” That project would have replaced the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Center with a 25-story condo tower, amending the city general plan to allow for multi-unit residential use on the site. The museum planned to move to Costa Mesa.

The Newport Beach City Council in 2016 approved Museum House but revoked the approval early this year after opponents gathered enough petition signatures to prompt a referendum.

“This was planned for,” Murphy said of the Koll Center Residences. “This is the final leg in a process that’s been underway since 2006.”

Not everyone at the forum was sold on the project.

People in lower-slung office buildings near the site expressed concern about the taller additions boxing them in.

One audience member was unsure about an environmental impact study that said the condos wouldn’t have a significant effect on traffic.

Local activist Susan Skinner said Shopoff would be building on only about five of the site’s 13 acres, making the project overly dense. Skinner, who was an opponent of Museum House, said she doesn’t think Newport Beach residents will find this project acceptable either.

“I am horrified that the city is actually approving this,” she said. “These are effectively stacked mansions.”

The city began paving the way for the Koll Center Residences with a 2006 update to the general plan, which introduced residential and mixed-use development in a corner of Newport Beach known as the Airport Area. That pocket of town, generally bound by MacArthur Boulevard, Jamboree Road and Birch Street, is dominated by office and light-industrial uses.

Landowners seeking to take advantage of the new land use got a green light in 2010 when the City Council approved a broad “integrated conceptual development plan” to build about 1,500 homes, parks and some retail stores in the area. The plan brought about what is now Uptown Newport, also a Shopoff project, and the proposed Koll Center condo towers.

The city Planning Commission will take up the Koll Center project in January.

The city has extended its deadline for comments on the project’s draft environmental impact report to Nov. 13.

Copies of the draft EIR are available in the Community Development Department at City Hall, at all four public libraries and online at bit.ly/2zV7Y4H.

Written comments about the report can be sent to Rosalinh Ung, associate planner, at [email protected] or mailed to City Hall, care of the Community Development Department, 100 Civic Center Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660.

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