Local News in Brief : Laguna Niguel : Supervisors Uphold Approval of Resort

The county Board of Supervisors on Wednesday denied a community group’s appeal of the approval of a $300-million resort that is proposed for Monarch Beach by a Hawaiian developer.

The resort would include a luxury hotel with about 1,100 rooms, a professional-caliber golf course, exotic flower gardens and waterfalls, an opera theater, an ice skating rink and a beach house.

It is a smaller development than a Monarch Beach project by Stein/Brief Inc. of Newport Beach that already has received all of its necessary approvals. But neighbors of the Hawaii group’s plan still objected to the amount of traffic the project could generate on Coast Highway, as well as to the proposed height of its main building.

Supervisors voted unanimously to uphold the approval of the county Planning Commission and deny the appeal from the South Laguna Civic Assn. The board also requested that the county staff investigate ways to mitigate truck traffic that might be generated by construction of the resort.

Wednesday’s vote by supervisors ends all of the county approvals necessary for construction. The project, however, still must be approved by the state Coastal Commission before it can be built.