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Newport Beach City Council appointed a new member to the Planning Commission during their meeting Tuesday. On Sept. 25, former Commissioner Bill Dunlap resigned. An ad-hoc Appointments Committee consisting of several Council members was created and reviewed applications for the...

The Planning Commission Study Session for the Koll Center Residences project, previously scheduled for Nov. 8, has been postponed and due to an unscheduled vacancy on the Commission, Newport Beach city officials announced this week. In a message shared on Wednesday, city...

A-frame signs may soon be allowed in Corona del Mar following a Planning Commission vote last week. The commission voted Aug. 21 to recommend adoption to the city council of a code amendment allowing a-frame signs with certain limitations in Corona del Mar. They approved the...

Several plan and code amendments were approved this week as part of the process to develop a boutique hotel on the old city hall site. After nearly two hours of discussion, including a dozen public speakers, the Planning Commission voted unanimously 5-0 in approval during the...

The Newport City Council has overruled the Planning Commission on several key votes this past year.  It kind of makes you wonder if we really need a Planning Commission. Hey, if the City Council is going to overrule the commission anyway, why put an applicant through th...

I don’t know Robert Hawkins very well, maybe a couple of personal conversations, one lunch and a phone call or two. He called me a coward in the Daily Pilot a few years ago, and I’ve written a few fun things about him in my column. The feeling I get about him from my...

Typically, a City’s Planning Commission is the stepping stone to the City Council, since it is the most high-profile appointed Government body that residents and businesses will have to go through in order to build/invest/create/expand their home or business.  Notwithstanding...

If you are one of the dozens who regularly read my columns, you know that I think that Newport Beach is business unfriendly, between the environmental restrictions imposed by the City Council through just the planning process itself, to just plain old NIMBY-ism. For many years,...

Former Mayor Tod Ridgeway looks at the stretch of Mariner’s Mile at PCH and Dover and doesn’t see the chain link fence screening – unsuccessfully – abandoned and decaying buildings. He sees Mariner’s Pointe, a high-end center anchored by a jewelry store and featuring...