Coastal zone rules for a Newport Beach remodel

What the Coastal Act says

The California Coastal Act of 1976 requires a coastal development permit for development in the coastal zone, and it defines development extremely broadly. The City description of it is blunt: erection of structures, grading, changes in the density or intensity of land use, subdivisions, construction, reconstruction, demolition, alteration of the size of structures, and the removal of major vegetation. In short, just about everything.

The Act then provides exemptions for common categories of development, including improvements to existing structures, and repair and maintenance. Those exemptions are incorporated into the City Local Coastal Program. That is the sentence that covers most kitchen work: a kitchen remodel inside an existing house is an improvement to an existing structure.

The categorical exclusion, in force since 1977

There is a second layer, and it is stronger. The Coastal Act allows the Coastal Commission to exclude entire categories of project from coastal development permit requirements where they carry no potential for significant adverse effect on coastal resources or public access. One such categorical exclusion has been in effect in the Newport Beach coastal zone since 1977 and is incorporated into the City Local Coastal Program.

It excludes single-unit and two-unit projects from coastal development permit requirements, with two named exceptions: the first row of lots on the shoreline, and the Bay Shores community. If your house is a single-family home or a duplex and it is not in the first row on the shoreline or in Bay Shores, the exclusion is the reason a kitchen remodel here is a City building permit and nothing more.

Who issues the permit when one is needed

The City, in most cases, and that has been true since January 30, 2017, when its Local Coastal Program Implementation Plan took effect. Before that date, anything requiring a coastal development permit went to the Coastal Commission South Coast District Office in Long Beach, which covers all of Orange County and part of Los Angeles County and meets monthly at rotating locations. After certification, the majority of applications are processed by City staff, and hearings are held in Newport Beach before the Zoning Administrator, the Planning Commission or the City Council depending on the nature of the project.

The Commission did not disappear. It retains original jurisdiction over submerged lands and tidelands, meaning areas below the mean high tide line, and over certain public trust lands. It also acts as an appellate authority in defined areas.

The appeal areas

A coastal development permit approved by the City can be appealed to the Coastal Commission where the property sits in one of these areas, as the City sets them out:

• Between the sea and the first public road paralleling the sea.
• Within 300 feet of a beach, or of the mean high tide line, whichever is the greater distance.
• Within 100 feet of streams and wetlands.
• Within 300 feet of the top of the seaward face of a coastal bluff.

The City publishes a coastal development permit and appeal jurisdiction map showing where these fall. For an interior kitchen none of it usually applies, because no coastal development permit is being sought in the first place. It becomes relevant the moment a project starts touching the exterior envelope: a new or enlarged window, a folding door out to a patio, a change in building footprint, or work on a bulkhead or a dock.

When a kitchen project does cross the line

Three situations turn a kitchen remodel into something the coastal rules notice.

• New or enlarged openings. A kitchen that opens to a patio through a new folding door is altering the exterior. On most Newport Beach lots the categorical exclusion still covers it, but this is the point at which the answer stops being automatic.
• Any change in footprint. Pushing the kitchen out into a side yard, however modestly, is an alteration of the size of the structure and it engages both zoning and coastal review.
• The excepted locations. A first-row shoreline lot, or a house in Bay Shores, sits outside the categorical exclusion, so the ordinary exemption analysis applies rather than the blanket exclusion.

None of those are reasons not to do the work. They are reasons to establish the answer at the drawing stage, when it costs a phone call, rather than at the permit counter when it costs the schedule.

What this means in practice, by neighbourhood

Balboa Island and the Balboa Peninsula are entirely inside the coastal zone and are largely single-unit and two-unit housing, so the exclusion covers the great majority of interior work, with bayfront and oceanfront first-row lots the case to check. Corona del Mar is the same picture on a grid of duplex-heavy lots. Eastbluff sits above the Back Bay, where the bluff-top 300 foot appeal area is the detail that matters if a project ever reaches the exterior. Newport Heights lies outside the coastal zone across most of its area, which removes the question entirely.

Neighbouring cities administer their own programmes. Laguna Beach runs its own local coastal programme with its own rules and timelines, and Huntington Beach another. A contractor familiar with Newport Beach procedure is not automatically familiar with Laguna procedure, and that is worth asking about on a job across the boundary.

The short version

1. Interior kitchen work in an existing house: a City building permit, and nothing coastal.
2. Same work in a single-unit or two-unit house: also covered by the 1977 categorical exclusion, unless the house is first-row shoreline or in Bay Shores.
3. Work touching the exterior envelope: ask before drawing.
4. Where a coastal development permit is needed, the City issues it and hears it locally, and it can be appealed to the Commission in the defined areas.

The permits guide covers the building permit side, which is the part that applies to most people reading this.