Saving Laguna’s Bluff-Top Park

Efforts to preserve Laguna Beach’s picturesque Heisler Park from coastal erosion remain on track, with city officials relieved that recent rains have not further imperiled the bluff top.

Parts of the 78-year-old park, popular with tourists, joggers, picnickers and wedding parties, are slowly crumbling onto the beach below, north of Laguna’s Main Beach.

Last month, the City Council approved the half-mile-long park’s preservation and renovation, including stabilizing the bluff at Rockpile Beach, improving beach access, widening some pathways and moving others back from the bluff’s edge.

Architects and engineers are expected to complete drawings in about nine months.

About two years after that, work to repair the bluff will begin -- if the city can determine how to pay for the project, which is expected to cost more than $4 million.

“The park has evolved over the last 70 years, and now it’s time to upgrade and renovate the park,” said Wade Brown, project director.

“We just wouldn’t want to lose a coastal resource like that for any reason.”

The park runs from the north end of Main Beach Park to Diver’s Cove, along the natural bluff top and overlooking several pocket beaches.

It attracts about 500,000 visitors each year. Most meander the palm-, pine- and cactus-lined pathways.

Recently, Suzanne Ott walked along the bluff tops with her West Highland terrier, Buster.

“It’s just so relaxing to come down here. It’s beautiful,” she said.

Since the park opened in 1927, piecemeal erosion repairs have been made.

In recent years, park personnel have noticed deteriorating conditions and made suggestions for a number of small projects, which have been grouped to form the current master plan, Brown said.

Although recent rains haven’t caused significant damage, stabilizing the bluffs is imperative, he said.

“It’s one of those places that everybody is proud of. Everybody loves it,” said Jane Janz, a Laguna Beach Historical Society board member.

“That’s the natural process -- for cliffs to recede like that. But it would be terrible to lose” the park.

In especially critical condition are the 30- to 35-foot cliffs at Rockpile Beach, site of an ancient landslide.

The steep stairs leading to the beach and a popular surf spot are slowly being undermined.

Adjacent to the north side of the stairs is a mud-caked, root-bound clump of palms, cactuses and shrubbery, evidence of a recent slide.

“The stairs, pathway and bluff at Rockpile Beach will eventually collapse if action is not taken,” according to an environmental impact report prepared by a Mission Viejo consulting firm.

Plans call for replacing the Rockpile Beach stairs with a new set about 100 feet south and stabilizing the cliff with a southward continuation of the existing rock-faced retaining wall under the bluff-top pathway, Brown said.

Renovations are expected to last about 50 years, he said.

In some areas, erosion is aggravated by groundwater and runoff.

Other park improvements will include a new drainage system, additional pathway lighting and replacement of iron guardrails with aluminum ones.

Some pathways will be widened and others moved away from the bluff’s edge.

And accessibility for people with disabilities will be improved by decreasing the grades on steep portions of pathways and replacing the restrooms.

L.A. Studio, a Laguna Beach landscape architectural studio, developed the park plan, paid for with a $225,000 grant from the California Coastal Conservancy and a matching grant from the city.

But funding sources for the multimillion-dollar construction phase of the project have not yet been identified.

A portion of the money will come from the city’s 10-year capital improvement program, and the balance is expected to come from grants and other sources, Brown said.

“Right now that’s still unknown. It always is until we get down to that actual year,” Brown said. “We’re pursuing all sources of funding.”

With construction more than two years off, city officials are hoping next year will be dry.

“If more of it crumbles, we’re just going to have to close part of it off until we can get the money to fix it,” said City Manager Kenneth C. Frank.