BALBOA CENTER - MARINA PARK

The city of Newport Beach wanted the design for their new Marina Park located on the Balboa Peninsula fronting on the bay to include a multi-purpose Community Center and a Sailing Center including classroom space for local residents.  The park also included two new restroom facilities and would also become home to the new Argyros Girl Scouts Leadership Center, also designed by Bundy-Finkel Architects.

 

Rabben Herman Design Office came up with an amazing design for the park and Bundy-Finkel Architects designed the new Balboa Center as it was eventually to be named.  It included a new 11,000 sf Community Center and 13,000 sf Sailing Center.  The project also includes the city’s Marine Services offices, the Lighthouse Cafe and two new restroom facility buildings and the lighthouse tower also houses a new tsunami warning system designed to serve the local community.

​

The building features many modern interpretations of nautically-themed motifs with building forms recalling spinnakers in full sail, extrapolations of boat hulls as plan elements, and a 72 foot tall glass lighthouse, the bottom of which houses a gourmet restaurant.  Amazing views of the bay reveal themselves from every point in the buildings while the glass lighthouse serves as a way-finding point visible to boaters on both the bay and ocean sides of the peninsula.

​

A marina was also constructed at the site for visiting boaters and the Sailing Center was designed with restroom and laundry facilities included to serve those visitors.

​