A local watchdog group is suing Newport Beach over the way the city counts housing near John Wayne Airport and Fashion Island toward its state-mandated building goals, arguing a recent appellate ruling against Redondo Beach proves the city’s entire housing plan is built on a legal shortcut that no longer holds up. The lawsuit, filed by the Newport Beach Stewardship Association, asks a judge to freeze construction on affected projects until the city rewrites its plan.
The case lands in front of Orange County Superior Court Judge Melissa McCormick on Thursday, marking the first hearing in a dispute that could ripple across the city’s housing pipeline, according to the Los Angeles Times. At issue are housing overlays, zoning tools that let developers build residential projects in certain areas without actually requiring them to do so, which Newport Beach leaned on near the airport and the upscale Fashion Island shopping district to help satisfy its Regional Housing Needs Assessment obligations.
The association’s argument rests heavily on a California appellate court decision that invalidated Redondo Beach’s housing plan after finding the city improperly used similar overlays, zoning that permits but doesn’t mandate housing, to meet its own state housing targets. That ruling disallowed the practice specifically because the underlying zoning still allowed nonresidential development, according to the same Los Angeles Times report. The California Supreme Court declined to take up Redondo Beach’s appeal in January, leaving the appellate decision as the governing precedent other cities now have to reckon with.
A City Council Candidate Pushes the Redondo Beach Parallel
Walter Stahr, who is running for Newport Beach City Council, has become the most vocal public face pressing the city to change course. We want the city to adopt a housing plan that complies with the law as interpreted by the court of appeals in the Redondo Beach case, Stahr said, per the Los Angeles Times. He went further, arguing the ruling isn’t limited to one city’s zoning quirks: The Redondo Beach case tells every city in California go back to the drawing board, he said…