Mayor Must Escape Canyon for Respite in Mountains

Lida Lenney doesn’t usually remember her dreams. But she awakened Friday morning with a nightmare fresh in her mind: A Times reporter had followed her into a restroom, doggedly trying to get an interview.

Yes, mayor, it’s time to get away for awhile.

You don’t need to be a professional interpreter of dreams to know that these are not the most relaxed of times for Lenney, the Laguna Beach mayor in the middle of protracted negotiations with the Irvine Co. over the fate of the Laguna Laurel residential development.

On too many mornings, she says, she has awakened with her jaws clenched.

That’s why she was determined to get away this weekend for a long-planned family get-together at Lake Arrowhead. And determined to have as much fun as a mayor can have, knowing that a critical moment in her city’s history is at hand.

But knowing that twists and turns in the Irvine Co. negotiations could unfold hour-by-hour, Lenney sat in a makeshift City Hall office Friday morning and talked about leaving even for a weekend: “I feel like I’m about to give birth, and it’s a breech birth, and I can’t even be there for it.”

Even as of this morning, it’s uncertain how prophetic those words may have been. By the time Lenney got to Lake Arrowhead late Saturday morning, a message already awaited. City Manager Kenneth C. Frank and councilman Robert F. Gentry had met again with Irvine Co. officials and afterward had tentatively scheduled a council meeting for 2:30 p.m. today.

So much for a relaxing weekend. But like almost everything else in these delicate and difficult negotiations, even the scheduled council meeting was considered tentative.

But if it’s held, it’s just a two-hour drive from Lake Arrowhead back to reality.

For Laguna Beach and the Irvine Co., this is crunch time. After a decade of howling protests from environmentalists and others, after protest marches and threats of recalling public officials who voted for the project, the city is on the verge of buying out the Irvine Co.’s proposal to build 3,200 homes in the pristine Laguna Canyon--nearly as symbolic to Laguna’s identity as the coastline itself.

But it ain’t a done deal. It could happen today. Or early next week. Or it could all fall apart.

So, if you’re the mayor, there are plenty of things to fret about.

For starters, the City Council hasn’t signed off on it yet. There’s still the tiny matter of coming up with the $78 million to give to the Irvine Co., $20 million of which would come from a bond issue to go before the city’s voters next month.

“I think we’re making history,” she says. “Environmental history in Orange County. What’s happening is very significant.” Developing the canyon, she says, “would mean the demise of this town as we know it.”

But whether the deal happens or not, Lenney’s been doing a lot of thinking lately, mostly about how far things have come in saving the canyon from the bulldozers.

She remembers meeting in December, 1987, with four other people, a group that would become the Laguna Canyon Conservancy and carry the ball on canyon preservation. That group of five eventually grew to numbers that packed meeting rooms and staged protest marches that drew several thousand people.

Slowly, they wore down the Irvine Co.

“At one point,” Lenney says, “I thought it was my leadership. Then I realized it wasn’t any one person. It’s not even a group of people. It’s the canyon itself that gets a grip on you.”

Last night, Lenney tuned out for at least a few hours thoughts of million-dollar deals and canyon preservation. For the time being, there was more pressing business, such as her grandson Wesley’s first birthday party. There was the business of just enjoying the closeness of family.

“It’s been wonderful to come up here,” Lenney said. “I’m so excited and happy to be with the family. We kept hugging each other and saying how wonderful it was. There are certain values that are eternal. The canyon is one of them, and family is another.”

For this weekend, the twin causes in Lenney’s life brushed up against each other, as they often do. And while she finds the canyon issue “invigorating and inspiring,” her grandson’s first birthday party and a long walk by the lake with her daughter made politics seem awfully far away.

Soon enough, we’ll all find out how the drama over the canyon has played itself out. Soon enough, Lenney will be back having dreams about reporters chasing her into the ladies room.

In the meantime, don’t worry, mayor.

Don’t let something like the future of your city ruin a perfectly good weekend.

After all, they say Lake Arrowhead is lovely this time of year.