Teams unveil city hall designs

Newport Beach’s new city hall may have a green roof, solar paneling, a tide pool area or even a nearby restaurant and bar, according to designs offered Saturday to the City Hall Design Committee.

During a marathon nine-hour session at the Newport Beach City Council Chambers, five design firms showed their ideas for the pending City Hall and also for the park, situated between MacArthur Boulevard and Avocado Avenue near the beach, that will surround the building.

The committee, consisting of five architects as well as a non-voting chairman, is expected to recommend a design to the City Council in late October.

Larry Tucker, the committee’s chairman, called the proposals “five outstanding plans that were incredibly different.”

“I expected to see more similarities than what we saw,” he said after the hearing. “The goal of our committee was to let the architects be creative, and that’s what they did.”

Tucker said the designs for Newport Beach City Hall will soon be on display at the current City Hall, the Oasis Senior Center, the Newport Coast Community Center and Newport Beach’s libraries until the City Council makes a decision.

The five firms presenting Saturday were Johnson Fain from Los Angeles, Gonzalez Goodale Architects from Pasadena, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson from San Francisco, Rossetti from Newport Beach and LPA, Inc. from Irvine.

Each team spent 45 minutes presenting its design with PowerPoints and other visual aids, then took questions from the committee.

The designs, which the firms created with spatial guidelines from the city, had a number of similarities, with more than one team including green roofs, solar paneling and other environmentally conscious materials.

In addition, many of the presenters urged the city to restore the park’s wetlands and plant native vegetation on the land, which they said had been changed by developers over the years.

Scott Johnson, an architect for Johnson Fain, said his group wanted to tie the structure into the surrounding wildlife as much as possible.

The map he showed to the committee divided the land into a number of nature areas, including an oak hollow, a grassy knoll and a thicket.

“We see this really as a park area, with these — hopefully — very elegant buildings embedded in the park,” Johnson said.

Designs for the City Hall itself were largely built on conserving water and energy. Gonzalez Goodale suggested a building with mostly transparent walls to bring in natural light, while the proposal from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson featured sail-shaped structures on top of the building to provide light and ventilation.

The firms varied widely in their ideas for the park, with different teams recommending art walls, playgrounds and strolling paths.

Gonzalez Goodale suggested a restaurant and wine bar, which committee member Rush Hill said might function better as a meeting place for the Chamber of Commerce and Conference and Visitors Bureau.

“In that case, the wine bar will be very compatible,” he said, drawing a laugh.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].