Board Views Plan to Expand Art Institute in Laguna Canyon : Environment: Members’ reactions were reportedly positive, though the $5.6-million project had earlier raised concerns among anti-development activists.

Details of a controversial plan to expand the Art Institute of Southern California in rustic Laguna Canyon met with applause from institute board members when unveiled at a private dinner Thursday night. But board President Nancy Snyder would not comment on more specific reaction by the trustees.

All questions about the plan were referred to institute President William Otton, who was unavailable for comment.

Earlier reports of the $5.6-million expansion and endowment plan had stirred concern and some opposition from environmental activists, for whom the coastal canyon long has been a focus of anti-development efforts.

Snyder repeated that the plan has not yet been approved by the school’s trustees or submitted to the city of Laguna Beach.

“We’re not beginning, or even starting to begin, our capital campaign,” she said.

The board will discuss the plan Tuesday.

Otton said earlier in the week that while he knows “there will be a certain amount of resistance to any expansion” in the canyon, he is confident the board will endorse the plan.

The school is the only art institute in Orange County that awards the bachelor of fine arts degree. Planning for the expansion started last summer after completion of a five-year plan in which enrollment was projected to grow from 105 “full-time equivalent” students to about 300 in the next seven years.

In related action, school officials are considering a recommendation that the college change its name for the fourth time. Founded in 1961 as the Laguna Beach School of Art, the school was renamed the Laguna College of Art in January, 1986, and, the following June, the Art Institute of Southern California.

The current name seems “confusing for a lot of people in the community,” Otton said. “It doesn’t include the word college ; nor does it state where (the school is) located. The college recognizes that it is not known in its own community for the services it offers.”