Laguna OKs Resort, but Activists Also Score Win

Laguna Beach environmentalists won a small victory this week in their fight to preserve open space at the Treasure Island resort site.

The City Council on Tuesday approved the project on a 4-1 vote, with Councilwoman Toni Iseman dissenting.

The open-space victory came after the council decided to reduce the depth of a few residential lots by 20 feet, thereby increasing the size of a bluff-top park.

The site, a former mobile home park in south Laguna, encompasses 30 acres of some of the last privately owned undeveloped coastal property in Southern California.

The Phoenix-based Athens Group will develop a resort at the site, including a 275-room hotel, 17 homes, 14 condominiums and two restaurants.

The project has met fierce opposition from some city residents who say it will bring an onslaught of traffic and ocean pollution, and fails to provide enough open space. Opponents tried to stop the development through a citywide ballot measure in April 1999; it failed.

Iseman said she believes the development is still too dense.

“If I’ve had a mantra this whole way through, it’s been empty space,” she said. “There’s a density that keeps the resort from reaching its potential as a five-star resort.”

Former Mayor Ann Christoph, representing Village Laguna, a local environmental group, said she was partly satisfied with the outcome.

“I feel that we’ve gotten small incremental improvements,” she said. “But the amount of work that it takes is really more than we should be expected to do.”

Christoph said Village Laguna plans to appeal the project to the Coastal Commission.

“If the city had listened to all of our requests, we wouldn’t appeal,” she said. “I think the overall impact on the coast is still something the commission is going to be concerned about.”