Newport Beach Country Club eyed for future housing development
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The Newport Beach Planning Commission this week recommended City Council approval of a development agreement that could bring 78 housing units to the Newport Beach Country Club’s grounds.
Commissioners listened to a city staff presentation and asked questions about the potential Fairway Three project during their meeting Thursday. The proposed agreement would give Eagle Four Partners vested rights for five years to develop housing while giving the city the ability to negotiate public benefit fees.
The country club and golf course stretches out over 128.5-acres of land. In 2024, the city identified two parcels within the property as housing opportunity sites.
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Although Eagle Four Partners has not submitted any construction plans, the developer is eyeing a parcel located on the northwestern corner of the golf course for future housing.
“Where does the unit count of 78 come from?” Commissioner Mark Rosene asked city staff. “Does that include both of the opportunity sites or just one of them?”
Deputy Community Development Director Liz Westmoreland explained that city staff provided the estimate based on an overall Newport Center development cap of roughly 2,500 housing units.
“For the purposes of the [development agreement], the applicant has committed to constructing those [78] units in that northeastern area of the site,” she said.
The proposed agreement would also allow city staff to negotiate additional public benefit fees. Required park and development impact fees could tally around $6.5 million, but $3.3 million more would be negotiable between the city and the developer.
Jim Mosher, a Newport Beach resident and former City Council candidate, opined that the development agreement needed cleaning up to clear confusion over its footprint.
He also criticized a lack of discussion on affordable housing.
“The reason that we have overlays at all is not that we need more market-rate housing, but we need it to tell the state we had a plan for affordable housing,” Mosher said. “Although there was inadvertently a condition of approval now eliminated to refer to an affordable housing plan, I don’t see any guarantee in here that this is going to advance our need to meet our [state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Assessment] requirement for affordable units.”
Shawna Schaffner, an Eagle Four Partners representative, passed on giving a presentation and briefly stated to commissioners that she supported a recommendation for City Council approval of the development agreement.
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The City Council could conduct its own public hearing as soon as its scheduled Oct. 13 meeting with a second reading of the agreement two weeks later.
“There have been some questions regarding what that future project would look like and what the site would look like, but I do want to note that the future project would require review by the Planning Commission,” Westmoreland said. “The Planning Commission will have the opportunity to review that project when the details are provided.”
Commissioners followed by unanimously passing the recommendation for council approval.
“What we have here is the applicant is reserving 78 units and that’s the bottom line [of] what this is going to do,” Rosene said. “I feel very confident that staff can clean up all of those [technical analysis] issues before it goes to council.”
