Laguna Canyon Group Hoping Pact Buys Time

LAGUNA BEACH — After two years of negotiations, the Irvine Co. has agreed to not immediately develop 189 acres in Laguna Canyon and promised to make concessions if it chooses to build on the land in future years.

Preservationists say the five-point agreement announced Tuesday by the Laguna Canyon Foundation gives them time to continue negotiating to keep the land as open space.

“It’s a tremendous step in the right direction,” said Mary Fegraus, director of the foundation, which was formed to raise money to buy the property. “It’s their land. They have development rights for it and they don’t have to be talking to any of us.”

However, the agreement also leaves unanswered the question of what will ultimately happen to the stretch of greenery west of Laguna Canyon Road and next to Leisure World.

Irvine Co. Vice President Carol A. Hoffman said the company’s five-year plan does not call for developing the property. However, that plan is amended annually, she said, and the company has the right to build about 1,500 homes.

While some negotiators say they still hope that the land ultimately can be preserved as open space, recent discussions have focused on ways to minimize the impact future development might have on Laguna Canyon and Leisure World.

For example, the agreement says any future development will not include connecting Santa Maria Avenue--which now dead-ends at Leisure World--to Laguna Canyon Road, a concession that was important to Leisure World residents.

The parcel was once part of a 2,150-acre property known as Laguna Laurel that the Irvine Co. had hoped to develop.

After a protest over the building plan, the developer and Laguna Beach struck an agreement allowing the city to buy the land over five years for $78 million. City residents voted overwhelmingly in 1990 to tax themselves to raise money.

The city paid the first $33 million in 1991 and lower payments in later years, but did not have the money to make the final $33-million payment.

City officials hoped to use $25 million from Proposition 180, the California Parks & Wildlife Initiative, to help buy the last 189 acres, but the measure was rejected by voters in June 1994.

A year later, the city’s deadline to buy the land expired.

Hoffman said Tuesday that the company would still consider selling the land, but first the property would have to be reappraised.