LAGUNA NIGUEL : Reorganized Council Delays Birtcher Vote

Hours after swearing in two newly elected members, the City Council postponed a final decision on a proposal to build a commercial center at La Paz and Aliso Creek roads.

During Tuesday night’s council meeting, farewell speeches were delivered by outgoing Councilmen Paul M. Christiansen and Larry A. Porter, both of whom had served on the council since Laguna Niguel became a city in 1989 and who were defeated in the November election.

The new council appointed Mayor Thomas W. Wilson to his second term in that post and Councilwoman Patricia C. Bates as mayor pro tem.

Then, after a lengthy public hearing, the council asked for further examination of the environmental and financial impact of the Birtcher Center project before a final vote is taken.

In putting off that decision at least until the Jan. 19 meeting, the council asked the city staff, developer Birtcher Niguel and residents to discuss the issues of parking, pollution and the overall design of the project.

In their first night as council members, Janet Godfrey and Mark Goodman listened to more than five hours of testimony from a representative of Birtcher Niguel, local business owners who support the project and a group of residents who live across the street from the empty lot that may someday be the site of a movie theater, office buildings, restaurants and a health club.

The council concurred with some of the concerns of residents of the nearby Lake Chateau neighborhood that traffic congestion and parking generated by the proposed project could become a daily problem, beginning in the morning when the health club opens to late at night after the movie theater lets out.

“The health club in combination with a theater really makes me uncomfortable,” Goodman said. “I need a high level of confidence that we are not validating a parking problem.”

The Birtcher Center, if approved, would be broken into four phases of construction. In the first phase, the company has proposed building a commercial center containing two restaurants, a Family Fitness Center, an Edwards cinema and an office building. In later phases over the next two decades three more office buildings would be built.

Local business owners at the council meeting endorsed the Birtcher Center, saying it “would complement, not compete” in the city’s economy.

A site use permit for the project was unanimously approved by the Planning Commission in October over the protests of many Lake Chateau residents. The homeowners then paid a $300 fee to the city for the right to appeal that decision to the council.

The Birtcher Center project has been in the works for more than three years and has been reduced in size and modified in height and density in order to make it agreeable to nearby residents.

The parking issues are “really (what we) have to look at carefully, but it is going to take us a little bit of time to absorb the (modified) plans and financial feasibility,” said Mitch Brown, vice president of development for Birtcher Niguel.