Expansion of Art Institute Spurs Concern : Development: The college realizes its plans to double its size won’t go over real big in Laguna Beach.

A plan to double the size of the Art Institute of Southern California on Laguna Canyon Road has reopened an environmental Pandora’s Box.

The plan, part of a $5.6-million construction and endowment campaign to be formally announced tonight at the school’s annual President’s Club dinner, calls for a $1.9-million, 15,000-square-foot new building and $1.5 million in upgraded existing facilities on the institute’s 2.8-acre property.

The site is part of an ecologically and archeologically rich coastal wilderness area that local groups have fought for years to preserve with the support of the Laguna Beach and Irvine city councils. The school’s expansion already has been denounced by the leader of one of Laguna’s prominent environmental groups.

Institute President William Otton said he believes that the school’s board of trustees will nevertheless approve the building program and accompanying campaign. A timetable would be developed at a board retreat this summer, Otton said.

“I feel that the board would not have asked (Laguna Beach architect Morris Skendarian) to go ahead and prepare a master plan for the campus if they weren’t interested in pursuing the program,” he said, noting that dollar amounts “accompanied the recommendations.”

Otton said he recognizes that “there will be a certain amount of resistance to any expansion. . . . I anticipate that it won’t be easy, (but) I think the city is interested in working with the college as long as the college cooperates and follows the rules.”

Otton said Laguna Beach City Council member Martha Collison--who is also a member of the school’s planning committee--sounded supportive “as long as we work closely with each of the City Council members.” Collison was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Mayor Lida Lenney, an ex officio member of the school’s board of trustees, is also the founder of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, a prominent anti-development group. She said that in the absence of specific information on the plans, she couldn’t provide “any kind of official reaction.” But she did say that preserving the natural beauty of the canyon “is a very sensitive matter for the city.”

“I think the Art Institute is a wonderful addition to our community, and I want to encourage them in their plans to upgrade,” she added. “But the question of expansion is a difficult one, mostly because of the location.”

The Art Institute, the only art institute in Orange County that awards the bachelor of fine arts degree, opened on the grounds of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts in 1962 and moved across and down the street to its current site, purchased from the Irvine Co. for $55,000 in 1977. At the time, there was a public outcry about developing property on the still pristine north side of the road, south of the festival grounds. The school agreed not to alter the landscape more than was necessary to erect the building.

Elizabeth Brown, president of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., said that her board has not taken formal action on the project but that she feels strongly opposed to further building on the site.

“We shouldn’t have compromised to let (the school be built) in the first place,” she said. “What happens is, you make a pact with the devil. . . . People spend 20 years or more creating a greenbelt and then to have its edges nibbled away.”

Brown said she had been among the representatives of several community organizations invited in February to tour the school, learn about the proposed expansion and express their thoughts.

“Most of the people on the tour were not overwhelmed” by the prospect of a building twice the size of the present one, she said. “The people who didn’t want (the school) in the first place didn’t want it to be bigger in the second place.”

Brown said the problem would not only be the new institute building itself but also the “halo of disturbances” caused by an increased student population and increased activities on the land. “There isn’t any way for them to (expand) without further impacting the environment,” she said.

Planning for the expansion started last summer, after completion of a five-year plan in consultation with Development Management Associates of Long Beach. The plan projected enrollment to be “around 300 students in the next seven years,” Otton said. The campus has 105 “full-time equivalent” students, and the plan is to increase enrollment by 20% each year.

“It was obvious we would have to add some buildings if we were going to serve that student body,” Otton said.

Last fall, the college formed a committee of 53 representing “the business community, professional volunteerism and higher education,” Otton said, to study the institution’s physical, financial, and marketing and public relations needs. Otton said the committee’s final report was presented last week to the college’s full board of trustees.

Otton said at one point this week that the plans for the new building involve 1.3 acres of Irvine Co. land next to the current school grounds and that the school was “completing negotiations” for its purchase. But institute board President Nancy Snyder and Irvine Co. spokeswoman Kathleen Campini both said no such negotiations are pending.

Snyder said the property, which the school now leases and uses as a parking lot, was “at one time” in escrow (“We would love dearly” to own the property, she said), but that the school could not come up with the cash. Asked again about the property, Otton said only: “It was my understanding there were conversations occurring (between representatives of the school and the Irvine Co.), but evidently they aren’t.”