LAGUNA BEACH : Options Offered in Mobile Home Fight

Negotiators in a dispute over the city’s largest mobile home park are expressing cautious optimism about settlement after recent talks among landowners, tenants and city officials.

For almost two years, a dispute has raged at the 27-acre oceanfront site between the owners, who intend to shut down the 50-year-old park and develop the land, and the tenants, who have long sought to buy the property and keep it as a mobile home park.

In a proposal offered by the tenants, the park would remain but the owner would be allowed to build on about 6 acres of unused land. A second option, favored by the owners, would allow the park to be closed eventually and full-time residents to move into condominiums built at the site.

Talks on a compromise are continuing, but negotiators said they are encouraged by the cooperative tone of last week’s meeting.

Richard Hall, a co-owner of Treasure Island Mobile Home Park, flew to New York on Wednesday to present two options to his partners at Merrill Lynch Hubbard. “It doesn’t do the tenants and myself any good to be in a long-lasting war,” Hall said before leaving for the meeting. “And it certainly doesn’t help the city of Laguna Beach either.”

A proposed rent control ordinance for mobile home parks will be fine-tuned by the city Planning Commission on Wednesday at the request of the City Council. Most of the planners object to the proposal, but the concept of rent stabilization for mobile home parks has been endorsed by the council.

Council support has provided some security for residents who had feared that they would be “economically evicted” by rising rents.