LAGUNA BEACH : Project Will Oust Artists, Critics Say

A planned apartment-studio complex in Laguna Canyon, intended to provide work and living space for local artists, instead will displace those who already live at the site, some artists say.

The project, which was approved by the city’s Design Review Board last week, will be the first created under a 1986 zoning ordinance intended to encourage the development of combined apartments and art studios where artists can live and work. The complex, which is expected to be complete next spring, will have 13 one-bedroom apartments, each with a sky-lit studio and sun deck.

The apartments will replace about 15 run-down shacks now clustered upon the 47,000 square feet of property along the 2500 block of Laguna Canyon Road. Charles Bartell, the Newport Beach resident who is buying the property, said the “substandard but usable” shacks will be moved to Tijuana to provide housing there.

City officials say they hope that the project will allow local artists, many of whom are forced by high rents to work or live outside Laguna Beach, to stay here. But some artists and woodworkers who work in the existing shacks say the project will in fact drive them out.

“I can’t believe the city’s approving it,” said Gary Szymanski, an artist who now pays $800 a month, utilities included, to live and work in one of the buildings. “I would be surprised if it doesn’t price almost everybody out of this place who is here now.”

Some who build furniture on the property admit that they will have to move their businesses out of town but have not spoken out for fear they will be forced to move sooner.

Artist Jorg Dubin, who works next door to the project site, said he fears that building new, more expensive housing will simply worsen a situation that is already of great concern to Laguna artists.

“It’s very difficult to find studio space in Laguna Beach,” Dubin said, “and they’re going to eliminate the spaces that are there now, and those artists are going to be displaced.’

Design Review Board Chairman Jeff Powers agreed that some of the artists who live in the shacks may be “forced out of town” by the increased cost. But he said neither the Design Review Board nor the City Council can “take financial considerations into their deliberations.”

Bartell said the studios will absorb one-third of the total 1,200 square feet to 1,400 square feet of each apartment. That, Dubin said, will be functional for graphic artists or painters but too small for artists who work with stone, metal, clay or wood.

“These spaces are going to turn into bedrooms and stuff,” he said. “They are not going to be art studios after a couple of years. It’s going to just transform into an apartment complex in an industrial area of the canyon.”

While such concerns have “credence,” zoning administrator Jack Connors said there are safeguards built into the ordinance to ensure that the apartments are used by artists.

Bartell, a retired physician who proposed the project when the city didn’t warm to his original plan to build a carwash, said he thinks that it is time someone put the new ordinance to work to fill a need for the city.

“I just like the concept,” he said. “I’m not exactly a philanthropist, but I do like the idea of keeping the artists in Laguna rather than having them leave.”

Bartell, who said the property is still in escrow, said he has not yet given notice to the approximately 30 current tenants. He does not know yet, he said, what the difference will be between the rents now charged and those for the new apartments. The new rents will, however, be “very affordable for anyone with a joint income,” he said.

Already, Bartell said, the project has generated so much interest in the art community that he has begun taking names of callers.

“They’ve been standing in line,” he said. “Every artist in Laguna Beach is interested in this.”

But Szymanski said his won’t be one of the names on the list. “I’m sure I won’t be able to afford it,” he said. “My plan is just to go to L.A.”