Controversial Laguna artist work/live project moves forward after City Council backs commission’s decision to keep permit alive

The hearing at one point got so convoluted that a Laguna Beach City Council member remarked, “Even the lawyers are confused.”

But after debate, counter-debate, emotional pleas and a city planner leaving the chamber mid-meeting to check records on his office computer, the council Tuesday pushed the ball forward for a long-contested artists’ work/live community proposed for Laguna Canyon.

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The legal question at the heart of the wrangling was whether earlier city permit approval for the proposed 28-unit, two-building development had expired — the Planning Commission ruled in April that it had not — and whether the project’s founder, sculptor Louis Longi, could get any further extensions.

Friends of the Canyon, a neighborhood group, appealed the commission’s decision to the council, alleging that Longi had failed to follow proper filing procedures.

In the end, the council voted 4-1 — with member Toni Iseman dissenting and complaining about “loose ends” in the matter — to uphold the commission’s ruling, allowing the project to move ahead.

Longi told the Daily Pilot last week that he hopes to break ground on his project this summer.

Several times throughout the hearing, Councilman Peter Blake expressed frustration with the process, calling the drawn-out saga “10 years of dirty tricks and legal maneuvers.”

“This is a clear indication of everything that’s wrong in this community,” he said.

Blake added that Laguna Canyon “is not going to remain the way it has been. It is going to change the way everything else has in the community.”

Friends of the Canyon attorney Julie Hamilton said the Planning Commission’s decision set a dangerous precedent. She argued that Longi could have moved forward with the project at City Hall around 2017 but failed to do so and missed his chance to press onward.

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However, Longi and his attorney, Jeffrey Harlan, argued that it would have been impossible back then. The work/live project — slated to include two two-story buildings with housing, six art studios and gallery space at 20412 and 20432 Laguna Canyon Road — was tied up as it faced lawsuits and underwent California Coastal Commission review. Consequently, it could not have moved forward, they contended.

Harlan called the opposition’s strategy a “delay tactic” that subverted Laguna Beach’s development approval process.

Blake scoffed at Hamilton’s argument that Longi didn’t follow procedures as he looked down at a pile of paperwork she distributed to the council at the outset of the hearing.

“You talk about them not being on time,” Blake said, “yet you drop this on me a few minutes before I’m supposed to figure out what to do about this.”

He also questioned the origins and makeup of Friends of the Canyon, which Hamilton described as an “unincorporated association” composed of “hundreds of people that have contributed.” She declined to clarify who pays her.

Some Laguna Canyon residents expressed dismay about the project, which the council first approved in 2014.

John Albritton and his daughter, Lily, said it would overwhelm the area.

“How can you choose not to protect Laguna Canyon from overdevelopment?” Albritton said.

In tears, Lily called the project something that “would change and take away all the childhood magic I grew up with” in Laguna Canyon.

“Please protect the dreams that I grew up believing in,” she said.

Bradley Zint is a contributor to Times Community News.

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