Irvine Co., City to Meet Next Week on Canyon

City officials are scheduled to meet Wednesday with Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren to resume negotiating development limits in and around the controversial Laguna Laurel Planned Community, proposed for environmentally sensitive Laguna Canyon.

It will mark the first time that the two sides have met since company officials suddenly sought the 30-day postponement of a hearing before the County Planning Commission.

Laguna Beach City Councilwoman Lida Lenney said Friday that when she learned that Irvine Co. officials had asked to put off the hearing, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, she celebrated the news with a bottle of champagne.

“I was so surprised and excited,” Lenney said. “This came right out of the blue.”

The postponement was seen by opponents as at least a temporary victory over the company’s plan to build 3,200 Mediterranean-style homes, condominiums and apartments on 2,150 acres of rugged countryside along Laguna Canyon Road.

The project, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 1986, also calls for an 18-hole golf course, parks and playing fields, an elementary school and a shopping center, according to Dawn McCormick, the Irvine Co.’s director of corporate communications.

The Planning Commission was to take up a supplemental environmental impact report prepared after Irvine Co. officials made changes that included “clustering” residential areas to the north of the project area, McCormick said.

But bolstered by the hearing’s sudden postponement, opponents of the canyon development said they will step up their fight to block the project by sponsoring radio and cable TV spots and getting involved with anti-development movements elsewhere in the county.

“We are meeting with a broad spectrum of people who are concerned about how fast (Orange County) is developing,” said Harry Huggins, a member of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, one of a number of local groups opposed to development in Laguna Canyon.

“We are going way too fast for what this community is normally used to in terms of development,” said Huggins, who helped organized a massive march down Laguna Canyon Road against the project on Nov. 11. “It seems that every canyon is being developed at once.

“If the people (of Orange County) wake up and realize that they are going to lose everything in one fell swoop,” Huggins continued, “they will oppose any more development.”

Huggins said that he had organized a rally at the upcoming Planning Commission hearing. About 500 opponents were expected to crowd into the commission meeting, and Laguna Beach Conservancy members were still scrambling on Friday to spread the word that the Irvine Co. hearing had been postponed.

“We’re still trying to locate everyone,” Huggins added.

Some sources indicated that the willingness of company officials to continue negotiations with the city was due, in some measure, to the success of the protest march, which Huggins said drew 7,000 people.

McCormick confirmed that the company decided to delay the hearing because of ongoing talks, but she added that company officials do not agree that the delay marked a victory for opponents.

“The Irvine Co. has a long history of seeking a consensus,” McCormick said. “In every community we develop, we work hard to seek a consensus and compromise that can be acceptable to the community.”

Representing the city at next week’s negotiations will be Lenney, Mayor Robert F. Gentry and City Manager Kenneth C. Frank.

The meeting will be the third time that the two sides have met since an environmental impact report was issued in the fall. Company officials have used the report to defend the project, which would also include the widening of Laguna Canyon Road into a six-lane highway.

Company officials have said that the environment would be protected because two-thirds of the project area is earmarked for preservation as open space.

However, city officials have persisted in denouncing the planned community, contending that it would destroy the so-called Laguna Greenbelt, a wide swath of rural land that separates the coastal city from the rest of the county.

As a result of one meeting, Irvine Co. officials offered to sell about 270 acres to Laguna Beach for $38 million in exchange for the city’s acceptance of the rest of the project and support of the proposed San Joaquin Transportation Corridor.

The offer included giving up the golf course and decreasing the number of homes by 500. Company officials termed the offer generous, pointing out that the project has continually been scaled down since its inception in the early 1980s.

The City Council, however, rejected the compromise.

“The council felt that $38 million was much too much to pay for a golf course and one section of the development,” Gentry said. “Quite frankly, the council felt the offer was not worth pursuing for the people of Laguna Beach.”

Gentry said that he expects the company to respond to a counteroffer before the two sides meet again. He said the offer was presented in writing to the company on Nov. 11.

Under agreement with company officials, however, Gentry declined to spell out the latest proposal.

Gentry said the meetings with company officials have been “very professional, very honest, and very cordial.”

“We both want different things for the canyon,” Gentry said. “But at least we are able to talk with no resentment, no hostility.”