LAGUNA BEACH : Residents Asked to Give Land to City

According to local lore, Depression-era film buffs who could scrape together the price of a movie ticket sometimes won a piece of ocean-front property here as a door prize. Now the city is hoping to get some of that land, known as Arch Beach Heights, for even less.

The City Council is inviting owners of more than 50 undeveloped parcels to donate their land to the city to be preserved as open space. City officials say it makes sense for landowners to give up the property because it cannot be developed and is a tax burden. Several Arch Beach Heights parcels have already been handed over, city officials say.

“People just came up and said, ‘We don’t want this any more. Do you?” said Assistant City Manager Rob Clark.

The strips of land are generally 25-foot-by-100-foot parcels and have an estimated value of $500, according to David Blakebrough, a deputy county tax collector. The county generally offers the city land at half price when property taxes are unpaid for five years.

Many of the parcels in Arch Beach Heights, which is also an area that includes many expensive homes, are narrow slices of land that dip into steep canyons. Tract maps were created without respect for the topography, officials say, and installing water service or roads can be difficult or impossible.

“They just took a ruler, laid it out and entered it on a tract map,” said Forsyth Scott, Laguna Beach County Water District engineering technician. The parcels were later offered as movie theater door prizes, Scott said.

“In the ‘30s that was popular thing to do,” he said. “You know, gas stations would give away glasses to increase their attendance, the same thing with theaters,” Scott said.

County officials say the city has taken an unusual step in soliciting the land. “I’ve never heard of it happening,” Blakebrough said.

And if the tactic works in Arch Beach Heights, city officials say, they may use it to accumulate open space elsewhere in the city.