State Panel Could Stall Resort Plan for Laguna

Pursuing a strategy that has derailed developments up and down the coast, activists are taking their fight against a controversial Laguna Beach resort plan to the California Coastal Commission.

A staff report due early next week may foreshadow whether Treasure Island, a seaside hotel and residential complex, will face a new public hearing--and possible opposition from the state board.

The commission has overturned local approvals of other projects recently. While developers say the commission is overstepping its authority, members of the board say they are merely carrying out their obligations under the California Coastal Act.

Opponents of Treasure Island are counting on the commission to stop or radically change the project, approved by the Laguna Beach City Council in February.

“The City Council made it very clear that their primary interest in Treasure Island is to generate bed taxes,” said Michael Beanan, vice president of the South Laguna Civic Assn., one of the groups that filed a challenge with the commission. “There’s better ways to do that than ruining the fragile environment.”

Treasure Island would be a 275-room hotel, 17 homes and 14 condominiums on about 30 acres. Now a tranquil, village type of setting, the site is among the last relatively undeveloped seaside stretches in Laguna Beach.

In their challenge to the commission, the activists say the project would violate local or state coastal laws by altering the natural contours of bluffs, which would be inconsistent with the local character, also failing to offer lower-cost recreational facilities or deal with runoff into an already contaminated part of the Pacific Ocean.

Toni Iseman, who cast the only council vote against Treasure Island, said she supports the commission challenge. “The project is too massive for the site,” she said.

The Coastal Commission is scheduled to decide at its April meeting in Long Beach if a public hearing should be held to determine whether the project complies with the Coastal Act and the city’s own coastal plan. The commission could then require the developer to alter the plan.

Key city officials who favor the project and its developer could not be reached Friday. But other developers say this challenge provides more evidence that the commission has too much power.

“It makes a mockery of the local planning process,” said Lucy Dunn, executive vice president of Hearthside Homes, developer of a project on the Bolsa Chica mesa that could be stopped later this year. “We have to comply with thousands of hearings and meetings and compromises and litigation. After going through all of that, we can never get closure.”

Coastal Commission Chairwoman Sara Wan defended the the board’s approach. Issues such as protecting public access to the coast may be better addressed by a statewide body than a local government subject to local economic and political pressures, she said.

“If we want to have planned development--rational development --we need to have it looked at from a statewide perspective,” Wan said.