Newport Beach : City Enters Dispute Over Bayside Village

The City Council has agreed to serve as mediator in a land purchase dispute involving Bayside Village mobile home park.

Council members did not offer to help the Bayside Village residents buy the land from the Irvine Co., but they have agreed to help negotiate as the Irvine Co. takes bids for the land from the residents and the current leaseholder, DeAnza Assets of Beverly Hills.

The mobile-home owners are mostly senior citizens. They want the city to offer support during negotiations now being attempted or to buy the 55-acre park and either sell it to them or become their landlord, forming an assessment district in which taxes paid by the tenants would pay off a low-interest loan for the property.

They have said they want control of the ground beneath their mobile homes because they fear DeAnza, the real estate management company that holds the lease on the land until the year 2013 and subleases to the residents, will raise their rents and eventually price them out of the park.

At a study session Monday, council members Jean H. Watt, Evelyn R. Hart and Phil Sansone opted to play the supporting role, while other members of the council said they needed more input from the Irvine Co. and DeAnza before committing to the residents’ cause.

It’s “premature for the city to get involved,” Councilman John W. Hedges said. Sansone, however, said: “We have an interest in protecting that senior low-cost housing. Maybe we ought to be the referee” for the three parties.

But Barry McCabe, president of DeAnza, said there is no need for a referee.

“DeAnza has no objections to the goals the residents are seeking,” he said. “These are our customers, our clients. I’m prepared to sell (the plots) to them in any way they would like it. I had not contemplated the city being involved.”

“It seems to me that that’s a pretty generous offer,” Mayor Clarence J. Turner said.

However, one Bayside Village resident, Gwen Greatorex, disagreed. “Mr. McCabe, he tells half-truths,” she said, adding that she is convinced that DeAnza will try to price her out of the park.

McCabe admitted that when the residents’ leases are up for renewal in 1993, he plans to raise the rents by about 30%, though he would not pinpoint an exact dollar amount. “We would raise it,” he said. “The concern is how much--it’s really too early to say.”

DeAnza had expressed interest in buying the land, home to 266 people, and came close to closing a deal with the Irvine Co. before the residents caused a public uproar about the deal and persuaded Irvine Co. officials to let them bid for the land too.

Recently, the tenants made a $15-million offer to buy the lease from DeAnza, and DeAnza responded with a counteroffer of $35 million.

A meeting to discuss the park purchase among the residents, their attorney, Gerald R. Gibbs, and DeAnza has been scheduled for early next week, Gibbs said Tuesday.