BANNING RANCHHere's a photo of Banning Ranch and the areas around it from the Sierra Club website: http://taskforce.sierraclub.org/banningranch/
On the left you can see a small portion of Huntington Beach, then the Santa Ana River and Newport. It's hard to see in this photo, but Costa Mesa is up on the bluffs. Go to the above link and navigate around a little and you'll get a better idea of where everything is.
Also, the Daily Pilot has a pretty good article on Banning Ranch in today's paper (2/25), http://www.dailypilot.com/.
WHY SHOULD ANY OF THIS MATTER TO IMPROVERS?
The CM PRESS believes that Newport should get land on the east of Costa Mesa such as Santa Ana Heights and similar pieces, but that Costa Mesa should get land on the west of our city such as Banning Ranch and an opening to the sea near the Santa Ana River.
We also believe that it would be acceptable to negotiate with Newport so that both cities get parts of Banning Ranch IF, and only IF, Costa Mesa were able to get the aforementioned opening to the sea. But if such a sharing of Banning Ranch were to occur, we believe that Newport should pay for the street improvements and maintenance, etc. of West 17th Street and a portion of other streets in the area. It makes no sense for Costa Mesa tax payers to have to pay for streets that will mostly be used by Newporters who pay their taxes to Newport, not Costa Mesa.
Banning Ranch is also in part of the area where a marina/beach/bay was once planned. Unless someone tries to revive that idea, such a possibility will probably die forever once something is decided for Banning Ranch--you can't put a bay through houses.
And speaking of homes, it's worth noting that because of the hundreds of old oil wells on the land, a major cleanup may be required. Even then, some people may be reluctant to buy homes built on top of an oil field.
Of course if a bay were put in, no one would have to worry about contaminated soil.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
