County Panel Defies Laguna, OKs Development : Urban planning: The city opposes the 26 homes on Emerald Bay and still hopes to use a sewage issue to halt the project.

Against the adamant objections of Laguna Beach officials, the Orange County Planning Commission approved plans Tuesday for a 26-home gated community along the bluff tops overlooking Emerald Bay.

Approval of the proposed Smithcliffs development came after five hearings, several of them grueling marathons at which opponents raised objections ranging from the threat of traffic tie-ups on Coast Highway to the loss of ancient Indian artifacts and a winter roosting area for the monarch butterfly.

Laguna Beach officials, who vowed to appeal Tuesday’s decision to the Board of Supervisors, repeatedly argued that the project would tax its public services, such as fire and police, and that the city should oversee the development.

The project is planned for 10.4 acres of land still considered part of the county and sandwiched in between patches of Laguna Beach just northwest of the city’s downtown. City officials complained in a letter last month that county planners had been “negligent” in assessing environmental impact.

But the Planning Commission decided that the project, two years in the planning stages, had cleared all reasonable environmental hurdles and approved it, 3-2.

William Dennis, president of the Brinderson Real Estate Group, the project developer, summed up his reaction to the commission’s decision in one word: “Relief.”

“Five Planning Commission hearings for a subdivision is diligence at its finest,” Dennis said.

Concerns raised early about the butterflies were allayed by county planners, who told the commission that up to 10 million of the species migrate from the Rocky Mountains each winter and that just 3,000 of them nest on the site of the proposed development.

“It’s been a kind of difficult process, but I think we’ve done our best to deal with the concerns of all of the neighbors on both sides and across PCH,” Commissioner C. Douglas Leavenworth told colleagues in making the motion to approve the development. “I think it’s a good project.”

Planning commissioners A. Earl Wooden and Thomas Moody joined Leavenworth in approving the project; Chairman Stephen A. Nordeck and Commissioner Roger D. Slates opposed it. Both Nordeck and Slates objected to a planned street that is to run along the southern border of Smithcliffs and provide public access to the bluffs.

Local regulations require that the developer provide such access, but neighboring residents have argued that the road should be built through the middle of the development rather than along the border abutting their back yards.

Nordeck argued that planners should ask for an exemption from local coastal regulations and allow the developer to pay a fee in lieu of providing public access or find a more suitable location elsewhere.

Despite the planners’ approval, Laguna Beach City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said the city still holds a trump card: The city has refused to supply sewer service to the project unless the property is annexed, which would give Laguna Beach regulatory control.

The Irvine Ranch Water District to the north has agreed to provide sewer service to Smithcliffs, but city officials are trying to block that arrangement.

The water district has also requested to annex the Smithcliffs property. However, a staff report to be presented today to the Local Agency Formation Commission, the county body that decides boundary disputes, recommends that the panel deny the district’s annexation request and calls the city the “most logical and efficient” provider of sewer service.

Brinderson executives said even if LAFCO agrees with the staff report and denies the annexation, the water district would still be permitted to provide sewer service.