Tentative Treasure Island Plan OKd

Sixty-two years of sneaking onto the beach at Treasure Island may soon be over for Madeleine Visca.

Closed for decades to the public, the scenic stretch of coast in south Laguna Beach has been everything from a mobile home park to a movie backdrop for films starring Bette Davis and Lucille Ball.

Now it appears the future of the 30-acre site will include a resort hotel and public beach.

At its meeting Thursday, the California Coastal Commission approved a tentative plan that would allow a 275-room hotel and bungalow complex there, with two restaurants, no more than 18 private homes, parking, a six-acre bluff-top park and three trails to the beach.

“The only way I’ve gotten there before is to swim in or go at low tide,” said Visca, who moved to the city at age 4 and lives next to the property.

Coastal Commissioner Shirley S. Dettloff, also mayor of Huntington Beach, said of the site: “It’s a wonderful piece of property. For years and years and years this beach has been inaccessible to the public. I’d like to get down there.”

But the allowance for private homes dismayed opponents, who want more parkland and less-dense development.

“We don’t need any more coastal housing. I don’t see a hotel as a public-use space,” said Robert F. Gentry, a former mayor of Laguna Beach.

“I think it’s a tragedy they did not have the vision to preserve and protect that resource for the people of Laguna,” said Gentry, who spoke to the Coastal Commission on behalf of seven other former council members opposed to the development. “This is one of the most precious last 30 acres of oceanfront property in Southern California.”

City leaders see the site as one of the last in Laguna Beach that could fit a development large enough to generate money for the city. They expect the hotel to bring in $1.5 million annually in bed taxes.

But Gentry and other opponents said they will continue fighting as the process continues.

Now that the parameters have been set, the city and the developer will hammer out the particulars of what will go on the property.

A detailed plan must win approval from the City Council and Coastal Commission before development can move forward. If the rest of the process goes smoothly, construction could begin in fall 1999, said Jack A. Cuneo, chief executive for property owner Merrill Lynch Hubbard Inc., the investment giant’s real estate subsidiary.

“It feels great,” Cuneo said of Thursday’s approval. “It’s been a long time.”

Since Merrill bought the land in 1989, it has wrangled with city officials, residents, environmentalists and others over what would go there. The original plan called for 268 homes in a gated community.

The land has sat unused since the city bought out the last residents of the mobile home park a year ago.