Laguna Beach : Report Supports Design Review Board

The Village Laguna political organization has issued a report that supports the work of the city’s sometimes controversial Design Review Board.

The review board, occasionally criticized for putting unreasonable obstacles before people wishing to build or remodel a home, actually approved 48 of the 60 new home proposals it considered and all but six of 73 plans for home additions in 1991, according to the report.

The board has been “taking a lot of heat lately and we thought we would look into it and see what some of the problems are,” said Johanna Felder, president of Village Laguna.

“There have been a couple of highly publicized projects that either have had problems going through the system or have not gotten approval, and they have been pointed to as the rule instead of the exception,” Felder added. “They are absolutely the exception, as this report shows.”

The city’s design approval process has generated considerable interest in recent years, in part because of a string of controversial decisions.

For example, a couple were temporarily blocked from moving into their new home last year because the residence was painted a shade of white lighter than the color approved by the review board. In another instance, in January, a couple could not gain approval to build a new home, in part because it would cast a shadow on an existing home.

The report, which a Village Laguna committee spent two months preparing, says that much of the controversy surrounding the city’s design review process can be traced to the fact that houses are now being built on lots that residents had previously believed would remain vacant.