Coming to Grips With the Inevitable--a New Tollway : Planning: Once fiercely opposed to the San Joaquin Hills tollway, Laguna Beach seems to be softening its stance, realizing it had better get involved to lessen the road’s impact on the community.

Perhaps it was the speakers at the last Laguna Beach City Council meeting who best summed up the council’s current feelings about the San Joaquin Hills tollway, a road that planners say will be under construction by fall.

“I hate the toll road,” resident William Buckley said as the council, which has fiercely opposed the project, fussed over what to do next. “I hate the idea of it. I hate the interchange. It’s a monster.”

But that doesn’t mean, Buckley added, that the city shouldn’t get involved in the process that is expected to end in the road’s construction.

Compromise is the word, another speaker said. “Unless there is a miracle, we’re going to have the bloody thing.”

It is with such input from its citizens that the one city that has stood ramrod stiff in its opposition to the 17.5-mile roadway finally appears to be softening its stance.

Laguna Beach City Council members insist they still oppose the plan to build a six-lane road across their beloved Laguna Canyon. But, with bulldozers practically visible on the horizon, they have begun scrambling to muster whatever muscle they have to influence the project and to redefine their relationship with tollway officials.

In recent weeks, the council has debated whether to spend scarce city dollars to hire a consultant who would monitor the road’s construction and advise how its design might be altered to lessen environmental impact on the canyon.

And last week, after years of rebuffing the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the group charged with building the tollway, the council held a special session at the agency’s Costa Mesa office so members could be briefed on the project.

Does all this mean city officials finally realize the corridor is a fait accompli?

“When I realize all the permits that are in place and the funding that’s there, it looks to me that it’s more of a possibility now than it ever has been in the past,” Councilman Robert F. Gentry said after Wednesday’s meeting. “And if that is the case, I certainly want to have, hopefully, some kind of role to play in terms of the impact of that road on the city of Laguna Beach.”

Some residents hope that by communicating with the tollway agency, the city can persuade it to at least shrink the size of a planned off-ramp in Laguna Canyon.

It may be open to question whether this flurry of activity will make any difference at this late date. The corridor agencies gave contractors approval to move forward on the project last month and an agency spokesman has said the design is already “substantially complete.”

“Our feeling is that the interchange we have planned for Laguna Canyon Road is the best solution,” agency spokeswoman Lisa Telles said Wednesday.

Some residents have suggested the city would have been wiser to have joined the agency earlier so that it could have been more involved in the process of designing the corridor, which is planned to link the Corona del Mar Freeway near John Wayne Airport to Interstate 5 near San Juan Capistrano.

But to have a representative on the agency, cities must agree to collect development fees to help build the road, something Gentry said Laguna Beach residents would have opposed.

“Politically, I don’t think we could have done that,” he said. “The people in this community are so concerned about that magnificent canyon being bifurcated by that road, our being there and providing funds to help build it just wasn’t a feasible alternative to us.”

The city offered considerable input regarding the project anyway, Telles said, by expressing its concerns during the environmental review process. Being a member of the agency may have made little difference, she said.

“It may be if Laguna Beach was a member from Day One, we would have the same design we have today,” she said. “It’s hard to speculate.”