They Saved Paradise, Put Up With a Parking Lot

Photo by Tenaya HillsToni Iseman has always worked to save the planet. Now she's working to save a parking lot.

First elected to the Laguna Beach City Council in 1998, she has continued to fight to preserve the ocean, canyons and sands that have tantalized residents and tourists for years. Now she's adamant about keeping a two-acre parking lot off-limits to development.

How adamant? After opposing a Laguna Beach City Council proposal to transform the property into a badly needed corporate yard, Iseman lobbied the California Coastal Commission, on which she also sits, to overturn the council's approval earlier this year. This has now put the City Council in the unenviable position of battling the very commissioner representing their interests on to the state coastal panel. But it's a fight Iseman considers vital to Laguna Beach's future, given the “sacred” status of the gravel pit.

Yes, folks, it's finally come to this: Orange County is so flipping overbuilt that enviros are now reduced to fighting for gravel pits.

The parking lot in dispute sits off Laguna Canyon Road about a mile from downtown Laguna Beach and bears the cryptic name of Act V. Generations of county residents have left their automobiles here during the summer before taking a trolley to the city's Pageant of the Masters, Festival of the Arts, Art-a-Fair and Sawdust Festival. As parking lots go, it's probably Orange County's prettiest: buttressed by hills teeming with sagebrush and other native vegetation, noisy with chirping birds, strangely serene even when filled to its 400-car capacity. Toward the north end, a trail leads into Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and its many wildlife sanctuaries.

But modern hustle and bustle demands development, so the Laguna Beach City Council in late 2003 decided that Act V—one of the last open spaces in this tiny community—would be the location for a new $5 million maintenance yard to replace the aging one farther down Laguna Canyon Road at Forest Avenue.

Iseman protested. “We should not have a suburban corporate yard in an area that doesn't support it,” maintains Iseman, who instead wants the facility rebuilt on its current site. “In a corporate yard are the gas tanks, welding and painting tools that a city uses for repairs. Why would we take these functions to the edge of a wilderness area that's highly susceptible to fire?”

Iseman's logic eluded her fellow council members, who voted 3-2 last December to move the yard. (Wayne Baglin joined Iseman in dissenting.) The nonprofit Laguna Canyon Conservancy appealed to the Orange County Board of Supervisors to deny a county building permit to the proposed Act V corporate yard, but that was also rejected.

Stymied locally, Iseman advised the conservancy to go before the California Coastal Commission, on which she has served since January 2003. In appealing to the commission, the organization took a different approach: instead of arguing against the corporate yard on environmental grounds, the conservancy claimed that eradicating the existing Act V parking lot would violate public access and recreation policies established by the 1976 California Coastal Act since construction would reduce parking spaces from 400 to 190.

Led by Iseman, the Coastal Commission agreed and unanimously blocked Laguna Beach's Act V designs on Feb. 18. “Public access is a significant coastal resource, and maximizing public access is one of the commission's strongest mandates,” stated a Coastal Commission staff report, which further noted that the Act V matter was of “regional significance” since mostly out-of-towners use the lot. “Providing public parking is an excellent method of maximizing public access.”

Laguna Beach City Manager Ken Frank disputes the Coastal Commission's decision, noting that the Act V lot was only expanded to its current size about three years ago and that Laguna Beach managed with a much smaller Act V for “30 or 40 years.” He also doesn't think the corporate yard's proposed site would harm the neighboring hills.

“When we first bought the property from the Irvine Co. about eight years ago, there really wasn't any concern,” Frank said. “We amended the local coastal plan, and I don't recall any opposition to it. Contractors use it to test their equipment all the time.”

Of Iseman's double role as councilwoman and coastal commissioner, Frank would only reply tersely, “There is a specific provision in state law that allows a coastal commissioner that's also a council member to vote on a project in their jurisdiction. She had that opportunity.” He refused further comment.

The Coastal Commission won't revisit the Act V issue until their July meeting at the earliest. But Laguna Beach is already waging war, hiring famed pro-developer lawyer Steven Kaufman for about $15,000 to argue their case. Despite the tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money Laguna Beach is burning on an issue the council already approved, Iseman is unrepentant.

“I still have my environmental concerns, but you don't have to be an environmentalist to think [that developing Act V] is a bad idea,” she said. “My responsibility as a councilwoman is to make Laguna Beach a livable community for residents. But as a coastal commissioner, my responsibility is to make sure the coast is available for the citizens of California.”

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