A proposed home to built on Ocean Boulevard near Poppy Avenue would be too tall and big, would destroy coastal bluff, would be geologically unstable and could lead to more coastal bluff development, according to a Coastal Commission staff report.
The Coastal Commission will consider a permit for the home at 3725 Ocean Blvd. at a Feb. 8 meeting in Santa Cruz, according to the staff report included with the meeting’s online agenda.
John McInnes, the project’s architect, said he was “flabbergasted” by the report, which he said made little sense and which he planned to correct at the hearing next week.
The home passed through the Newport Beach Planning Commission unanimously in May, when many neighbors spoke in support of the project that would replace a 1950s home that was described as a blight on the area. The commissioners agreed to variances that would allow the home to exceed the curb height by 1 foot, 9 inches at the northerly corner and 3 feet 10 inches at the southerly corner and to exceed height restrictions that would not be have any view impact because they are on the hillside; read our story here.
The new home would be built on three levels plus a basement, with a two-car attached garage and decks. It would be be 7,354 square feet — 478 percent larger than the existing home, which the Coastal Commission staff report listed as only one of its many concerns.
“The proposed residence would result in development that extends 28-feet below the finished floor of the existing residence and require 2,750 cubic yards of grading…” the report states. Excavating more of the bluff face “would result in significant landform alteration,” the report states.
“The proposed residence would go down the bluff face 24-feet below the finished floor level of the adjacent residence to the north and would go down 11-feet more into the bluff face than the finished floor level of the adjacent residence to the south,” the report states. Also, the home would extend above the curb, making it too tall by Newport Beach codes and could lead to other projects being built above the curb and limiting public views.
The proposed house would encroach upon the bluff face, which could lead to other homes building on the bluff face, the report states.
“If allowed, such development would disrupt the existing development pattern, and begin to change the character of the community,” the report states. “Future proposals on surrounding lots may likely seek to expand their development footprint to cover more of the bluff face. Over time, these incremental impacts can have a significant cumulative adverse visual impact. If the proposed development were approved, and others like it were approved as well, the bluff along this area of Ocean Boulevard could eventually become a wall of buildings with little bluff face remaining visible, thus causing significant, cumulative adverse visual impacts since the site is visible from adjacent public vantages.”
The building site also is not stable and the project “does not minimize risks to life and property in areas of high geologic hazard, does not assure stability and structural integrity and creates or contribute significantly to erosion and geologic instability,” the report states.
The homeowners could remodel or rebuild the existing home, the staff report states, so it is consistent with the neighborhood and geologically stable.
McInnes said the staff report took information out of context, and that the site was “extremely stable.”
“I have never seen anything so bad” as this staff report, he said. “It makes us look bad, be we are consistent with the neighborhood. It makes you mad.”
The homeowner, Desmond Fischer, said he was in Europe handling personal affairs and would be unable to attend the hearing. He also said the staff report was “amazing.”
“I question who could have written such a report,” he said in a telephone interview this week. “Were they really qualified to write a staff report like that and make those conclusions? I think not. This doesn’t seem normal or fair, and I have to ask why?”
