LAGUNA BEACH : Council to Weigh Playhouse Proposal

Residents who oppose a plan to build a new theater will appeal the Planning Commission’s approval of the project to the City Council tonight.

Proponents say the proposed 250-seat Second Stage, a spinoff from the Moulton Theatre on Laguna Canyon Road, would provide a place where “artistically adventuresome” projects could be staged while enhancing the city’s reputation as an “arts mecca.”

The new playhouse would be built at the south end of town in a now-empty building that once housed a Bank of America branch. The project has had the solid backing of the city’s arts and business communities, and the Planning Commission approved it last May.

However, some residents of the Three Arch Bay neighborhood adjacent to the project site want the council to overturn the plan. They say that having a theater next door would be too disruptive.

“The idea of constant traffic in the parking lot at late hours during the week and on the weekends is intolerable,” wrote a theater opponent in one of the hundreds of letters both for and against the project that have poured into the city.

“Since the Planning Commission meeting, we’ve gotten letters almost every day,” city planner Ann Larson said Monday. “It’s gotten to the point, though, that the letters don’t mean a great deal, because they seem pretty (evenly) split.”

If a majority of the City Council votes tonight to uphold the Planning Commission’s decision, theater operators plan to open the new facility by early 1995.

The Second Stage is a 10-year dream of Laguna Community Players Inc., a theater group commonly known as Laguna Playhouse that operates out of the Moulton Theatre. The nonprofit group bought the former Bank of America building in 1991 and decided last year that it was the ideal place to create a second playhouse.

Theater operators have agreed to improve the fencing between the bank building and a row of Three Arch Bay homes to soften the noise. They have also agreed to let the city review the amount of traffic and noise the playhouse is generating three months after it opens.

The project prompted a 3 1/2-hour public debate when it went before the Planning Commission, which finally approved it on a 3-2 vote and with a list of conditions.