Park road plans upheld

The Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday upheld its earlier decision to approve an agreement to build a controversial access road through Banning Ranch for a park in West Newport.

The council had a second hearing about the access road for Sunset Ridge Park, after conservationists from the Banning Ranch Conservancy claimed that an earlier council vote ran afoul of open-meeting laws.

The conservancy, which wants to preserve the undeveloped Banning Ranch area off West Coast Highway, sued in Orange County Superior Court last week to hold up plans for the park. The group claims that plans for an access road for the park through neighboring Banning Ranch will pave the way for future development of the area.

“This road is to spur the development of Banning Ranch — that’s really is what this road is all about,” said Steve Ray, executive director of the Banning Ranch Conservancy.

In other business, the council ruled that Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is out of compliance with part of a development agreement with the city that requires them to keep noise from a hospital loading dock to a minimum.

Residents from the Villa Balboa neighborhood next to the hospital complained to the council of excessive noise from the loading dock and said Hoag had not moved forward with plans to put in sound-dampening panels that hospital officials promised two years ago.

Hoag officials said at the meeting that they had not put in the sound-dampening measures because the hospital has abandoned plans to build a new 300,000-square-foot tower on the hospital site. The hospital agreed to reduce noise levels from the loading docks as part of a development agreement with the city to build the tower.

Also, the council voted in favor of settling a lawsuit with the Newport Beach drug and alcohol recovery home Morningside Recovery.

The details of the settlement were not immediately available.