LAGUNA BEACH : City Agrees to Pay $2 Million for Land

An ongoing dispute between Laguna Beach and a landowner over the price of 195 acres in Laguna Canyon has been resolved with the city agreeing to pay $2 million for the property, City Atty. Philip Kohn said Monday.

The parcel, known as the DeWitt property after one of its owners, is located at the junction of Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads, along the border of Aliso/Wood Canyons Regional Park.

For two years, the city and the landowners have wrangled over the price of the property, which the city intends to preserve as open space.

The city used eminent domain to seize the property in February, 1990, and placed a $1-million deposit in the care of the Orange County Superior Court. The dispute over the value of the land had been scheduled to be decided in Superior Court on Monday, Kohn said, but the two sides reached an agreement on the price late Friday.

City appraisers had placed the value of the land at between $720,000 and $1 million, Kohn said. But appraisers for the landowners, San Gabriel Valley oil dealer John E. DeWitt and Arizona resident Alice Platz, had set the land’s value at between $3 million and $9 million, depending upon whether the property’s ridgeline could ever be developed, Kohn said.

At one point, DeWitt had offered to give the city 180 acres in exchange for being allowed to develop 15 acres of the land. The city’s rejection of that offer upset some residents, who said it would have served DeWitt’s rights as a property owner while allowing the city to gain free open space.

In August, the city agreed to pay $900,000 for a hilly 9.2-acre parcel which it had failed to obtain through eminent domain earlier this year. That land, also located at the intersection of Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads, will be preserved as open space.

Laguna Beach has been both praised and criticized for its use of eminent domain to gain owned undeveloped land so that it can be preserved as open space.

Eminent domain is a process in which public agencies buy private property at fair market value without the owner’s consent. Disputes regarding the value of the property usually are settled in court.

Using $10 million of state money at its disposal to acquire natural parkland, the city has sought to purchase land in what it calls the “Laguna Greenbelt,” a rugged, hilly buffer that separates Laguna Beach from adjoining communities.

In one of its more ambitious efforts, the city managed to block the proposed 3,200-home Laguna Laurel housing development in Laguna Canyon by agreeing to buy the land from its owner, the Irvine Co. City residents voted to tax themselves to help make that purchase.

On Monday, Kohn indicated that the city may now be concentrating its energies on meeting its goal of maintaining open space in the canyon.

“This (purchase of the DeWitt property) is the last of the condemnations on the canyon road for the time being,” Kohn said. “I think most of the city’s open-space revenues are pretty well committed to buying Laguna Laurel right now. So we’re not going to be looking at many more acquisitions.”