A big part of Phil Ravenna’s Fourth of July holiday this year was focused on safety, including keeping the pyrotechnic staging area clear. The Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort & Marina’s Independence Day fireworks extravaganza was Ravenna’s first major event as interim general manager since the pandemic wound down.
Whenever swimmers, kayakers or paddle boarders approached the 350-foot fire and safety zone that had been roped off with buoys, Ravenna hopped out of his golf cart and trudged across the sand down to the water’s edge to explain that they could not use that beach for safety reasons.
Overall, Ravenna was upbeat about the first big post-COVID-19 activity at the resort and pleased to see the turnout.
“I’m really happy to move forward and have fireworks shows here again,” Ravenna said. “Everyone was having a great time. You couldn’t even hear the music over all of the ‘oohs and aahs’ from the crowd.”
Ravenna, who moved with his family to California in the early 1970s from Long Island, New York now resides in Newport Beach. He said, however, that he sometimes feels like he resides very specifically at the Dunes, especially when he ends up working 12- to 18-hour days as he did Sunday.
With 40 years’ experience in the trades and construction industry, Ravenna has managed a mobile home park in Sonoma, worked as a golf course superintendent in Mission Bay and as the facilities manager at Campland in San Diego which, like the Dunes, is operated by Terra Vista Management. He was named director of engineering at the resort in Newport’s Back Bay in 2014.
There are 110 employees during the high season with department directors for each of the four entities: food and beverage, water sports, RV and marina operations, marketing and security. Ravenna oversees all of them.
Although the resort staff geared up for what could have potentially been raucous behavior on the Fourth of July holiday, the crowd was well behaved.
“I’m pleased and proud with the team, everything went very well, no major incidents,” Ravenna said. “It was very busy and crowded, but not chaotic.”
They can laugh about it now when a rogue inflatable “iceberg” took to the wind after a rope got away from the guys during the disassembling of the inflatable water park.
Because the inflatables forming the resort’s lagoon water park are flammable they must be removed for the fireworks show.
Adrian Flores was part of the water sports team riding in the boat that was breaking down the inflatables.
“It was when we disconnected the last inflatable a little early that [the iceberg] flew,” explained Flores. “Our boat couldn’t keep up and it ended up on the other side of the beach. I was freaking out because I knew everyone was looking at me.”
According to Ravenna, the beach goers witnessing the scene seemed to be having fun shooting photos and videos to be posted on YouTube.
There were some violations of the Newport Beach ban on the use of fireworks over the holiday that spilled into the resort. A couple of people in the parking lot were trying to skirt the ordinance by putting on their own fireworks show with some bottle rockets.
Having a full security team of 40 equipped with radio dispatch allowed that activity to be shut down within minutes, according to Ravenna. “We caught them right away,” he said. “They were pretty easy to spot.”
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July 09, 2021 at 03:54AM
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Newport Dunes' interim manager reports smooth sailing for first big post-COVID event - Los Angeles Times
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