Rock House Gets Final Approval : Development: The state coastal panel clears the way for a home to be built inside a huge boulder on the beach in South Laguna.

A controversial plan to build a three-bedroom house inside a huge boulder on the beach in South Laguna won unanimous approval Thursday from the California Coastal Commission, the plan’s final hurdle.

The project, the brainchild of Newport Beach architect Brion Jeannette, calls for the rock to be scooped out like a pumpkin and a 2,800-square-foot home to be built inside.

The rock will become home to Mary Bowler, 75, who said she and her husband bought the 9,800-square-foot parcel dominated by the craggy boulder about 35 years ago for $36,000.

“I’m going to live in that house,” said Bowler, whose husband died 10 years ago. “I just wish he could share it with me. We always wanted to build there and live by the ocean.”

Once the house is built, the rock will be recapped with simulated rock and landscaped with the original plants. From Aliso Beach to the south, the 27-foot-tall rock will look largely unchanged, project manager Rob Williams said.

He estimated that the project would cost about $2 million.

The plan caught the attention of both the British and Russian press, Bowler said. It was also the subject of about half a dozen public hearings in Laguna Beach over the past 15 months. It finally got approval from the city’s Design Review Board in October, after the size of the house was reduced by 900 square feet.

But environmentalists who opposed the rock house have called the design a “Disneyland technique,” and preservationists have said it would ruin “a cherished landmark.”

To the Bowlers, however, the rock has been more like a giant headache, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle that stood between them and their plans to build a dream home at the site. Their inability to gain building approval had made the property almost valueless, Mary Bowler said.

Previous plans to build at the site next to Aliso Creek included flattening the rock so that a house could be placed on top, Williams said, a proposal rejected by the Coastal Commission.

Edward Bowler, an El Cajon dentist and Mary Bowler’s son, has said the family tried repeatedly to sell the land but was unsuccessful because prospective buyers feared that they would not be allowed to build on it.

Finally, Edward Bowler contacted architect Jeannette in the summer of 1991. Originally, city officials said “they would never approve a project there,” Williams said.

Village Laguna, created to preserve the city’s village ambience, opposed the project in city meetings. On Thursday, Johanna Felder, president of the organization, said her group still thinks that the design is a bad idea.

“You would destroy an historic landmark,” she said.

But the nine-member commission approved the plan without comment after a staff member presented the proposal, calling it unique.

Jeannette said construction of the house, which will include a basement and a two-car garage, probably will begin in July and should be completed one year later.

Williams said workers would use a backhoe to remove 1,200 cubic yards of rock soil and sand from the center of the rock, carting it away in about 120 truckloads. That part, he said, could be done in two to three days.

“The biggest concern we had was it would be solid rock or solid sand,” Williams said. “But the rock is . . . a mixture of different types of soils and some sand too. A tractor can go in there and dig it out without having to do any blasting.”

The solid rock foundation, he said, “is almost like a geologist’s dream.”

The location of all of the 24 kinds of existing plants have been charted, so they can be preserved at a nursery and then replanted in the same places. The Bowlers have posted a $25,000 bond to ensure that the site will look like its old self in five years.

Inside, Williams said, architects plan to continue the “rock house” theme, with the rock surface showing on the inner walls. The house will have a Southwestern style with wood beams and rock and stone flooring, “like an old Indian cave dwelling.”

The roof will have a skylight surrounded by plants and visible only from the air.

The Bowlers and their supporters were jubilant after winning final approval Thursday, hugging, clapping and shaking hands in the hallway outside the hearing room.

“This was a dream for me and my husband for 35 years,” Mary Bowler said.