Laguna Beach : Residents Win One: Parking Plan Defeated

A proposal to pave over a wooded median on Virginia Park Drive met with defeat this week after the City Council sided with area residents who arrived at the council chambers armed with signs and banners to protest the plan.

The council met jointly with the school board to consider the proposal, intended to replace spaces that would have been lost had a separate plan been approved to build a new swimming pool for Laguna High School on a school district parking lot.

However, in a 3-2 vote, the council decided to kill both the plan to build the pool on the existing parking lot and the proposal to create the new parking lot after several members of the Virginia Park Neighborhood Assn. voiced opposition to the plan.

A search for alternative sites for the swimming pool will continue.

Peter Hale, the group’s executive director, said the median is a neighborhood park and residents there were opposed to any plan that would result in its being turned into a parking lot.

Hale said later that the group was “delighted by the council action” and will “continue to beautify” the park by planting trees and shrubs.