Laguna Niguel OKs Hillside Building Limits

The City Council preliminarily approved an ordinance governing hillside development Tuesday despite protests from landowners that the law is too stringent and complaints from some residents that it is not tough enough.

The Hillside Protection Ordinance establishes regulations intended to limit grading on steep hillsides, protect sensitive plants and ensure that hillsides altered by development have natural contours instead of the flat-planed surfaces common in the city.

City officials said the ordinance is meant mainly as a “policy statement” that outlines the city’s position on hillside construction so that developers will know in advance what is expected of them.

Protecting the city’s remaining undeveloped hillsides has been one of the most controversial issues to surface since Laguna Niguel’s incorporation 19 months ago. After repeated revisions and almost a dozen workshops and public hearings, the ordinance was approved Tuesday, 4 to 0, with Councilman James F. Krembas absent.

The new law will govern development on land in which the parcel’s overall slope is 10% or greater, and where more than 5,000 cubic yards of earth are moved. It takes 5,000 cubic yards of earth to raise or lower a 1-acre lot by 3 feet.

The two parcels most likely to be affected by the ordinance are 22 acres overlooking South Laguna that are known as the Binion property and 60 acres at the northwest corner of Crown Valley Parkway and Pacific Island Drive known as Hon Hill, said Robert P. Lenard, the city’s community development director.

While generally outlining how hillside development should proceed, the law leaves many final decisions to the city Planning Commission.

For example, the ordinance bars the grading of slopes with an incline of 30% or more, unless commissioners grant an exemption. The amount of earth removed or delivered to a construction site must be reduced to a level determined by the commissioners.

The ordinance also requires that development’s impact on threatened and endangered species be “thoroughly identified and analyzed” and “avoided or mitigated to the greatest extent feasible.”

The ordinance does not preserve undeveloped ridgelines. The tougher Ridgeline Protection and Preservation Ordinance, supported by more than 4,000 residents in a petition drive last year, would have prohibited development within 300 feet of hilltops.

The council is expected to approve the hillside ordinance formally upon its second reading during the council’s next meeting in two weeks.