How a view gets a review

Mike Swanson

The play’s the thing that brings thousands of tourists to Laguna

Beach and keeps so many locals close to home each year, but the

view’s the thing that many residents continue to fight most

passionately to preserve.

For more than 30 years, the City Council-appointed Design Review

Board has served as Laguna Beach’s view police, repeatedly shattering

newcomers’ and longtime residents’ plans of building the four-story,

20,000-square-foot oceanfront mansion they’ve always wanted.

A recent board retreat and upcoming joint session with the City

Council are meant to find ways to deal with some of the complications

of trying to please everyone involved in the development process.

Whether you want a new house, a new deck, a new fireplace with a

chimney that keeps a family up the hill from seeing the rock

formation it’s used to seeing, you need to get by the board first.

The codes, criteria and parameters affecting your project, already

“numerous and complex” according to City Hall’s information guide for

the Design Review process, are still subject to the board’s

interpretation. Board chairman Ben Simon said there isn’t an exact

science to approving a project regardless of its scale, but an

applicant’s cooperation with the board and neighbors is essential.

“The code gives a menu of things that you review a project with,”

City Zoning Administrator John Tilton said. “You use that as

ammunition instead of using your feelings to argue against projects.”

Simon said their jobs would be a lot easier and less time

consuming for everyone if applicants paid more attention to their

neighbors, the board and the law instead of their dreams.

“Applicants’ selective hearing causes more problems than

anything,” Simon said. “When people say they don’t understand, it

usually means they didn’t like the plan and won’t follow the rules.

It really just depends. Somebody’s going to be unhappy no matter what

you do.”

The board meets at 6 p.m. every Thursday in the council chambers

at City Hall with usually 10 to 15 cases to hear, either as a first,

second or third hearing -- the newly established limit. Drawings are

pinned all over the walls behind the dais, which are consistently

consulted throughout the discussion with proponents and opponents to

the design in question. Meetings often last until midnight.

Each board member becomes familiar with each project by meeting

with the homeowner, architect and neighbors, and visiting the site

and homes surrounding the site whose view might be affected by the

proposed design.

“We look at so many variables before approving a project,” board

member Ilse Lenschow said, “but I’d say 99% of each case is based on

view, privacy and neighborhood compatibility. We have to make sure

neighbors don’t lose their views or privacy, and the project has to

fit with the rest of the neighborhood. It shouldn’t stand out.”

Board member Suzanne Morrison said some people don’t seem to

understand that the board requires applicants to tell their neighbors

what the plan consists of before design review. She suggested at the

board’s Monday retreat that they penalize any applicant who comes to

them that obviously hasn’t consulted with neighbors by counting that

meeting as a first hearing.

Because the board now only allows three hearings, with each

typically resulting in several changes necessary for a project’s

approval, that would be a rough penalty, board member Steve

Kawaratani said, but not a bad idea.

“When someone pays $1 million for a new home,” Simon said, “they

don’t want to hear from neighbors about where they can or can’t put a

hot tub, but that’s the way it works here. Every inch counts in

Laguna Beach.”

Laguna Beach resident Peter Mann, who lives on a street he says

has included at least one house under construction since 1984, thinks

the board is too stringent with small-scale projects and too lenient

with large-scale projects. He plans to take a current decision by the

Design Review Board, which was upheld by City Council, to court. It

involves a neighbor who “has one invasive project approved after

another.”

He said the violations of design review codes involving his

neighbor’s house are numerous and obvious.

“It’s a good process if they’d just follow the guidelines,” Mann

said. “They’re not suggestions, they’re codes. If they’re up for

extensive interpretation, then they’re useless.”

Every design review decision is subject to appeal by the City

Council, and the amount of design review cases on City Council

agendas lately has been rising. The two bodies plan to discuss

courses of action to curb the rise in appeals at a joint public

meeting Saturday, which also involves the Planning Commission.

Simon attributed the surplus of wealthy applicants in town to the

lengthening process, because they don’t mind spending money on

multiple appeals.

“We live in a litigious society and a city with lots of wealthy

people -- not the greatest combo when it comes to appeals,” Morrison

said.

Resident Andy Allison, who’s dealt with the Design Review Board

several times, fully supports what it does and believes its word

ought to be final. He added that board meetings should be on cable TV

like City Council meetings so residents could see how difficult and

important members’ jobs are.

“I don’t think every DRB decision should be appealed to the City

Council,” Allison said. “They’re professionals. They know more about

their jobs than the council. If there’s only a one-vote difference,

then go ahead and take those to appeal, but the time wasted on

ridiculous projects in DRB and City Council meetings is obscene.”

Councilman Steve Dicterow agrees that applicants ought to rely

more on design review, and not come to the City Council only because

it’s a different set of five people who might see things differently

and overturn.

“This council believes in its Design Review Board,” Dicterow said.

“We want to support DRB and let them know that’s where applicants

need to go. DRB always has the weapons at their disposal to adhere to

neighborhood compatibility and view equity.”

Dicterow added that this board is more stringent than he would be.

The trend is to approve smaller than under past boards, Morrison

said, with more than one member adding that they deal with several

additions or modifications to houses they wouldn’t have approved in

the first place.

“Once the cottages are gone,” Morrison said, “in come the

3,000-square-foot houses, and then we have Corona del Mar. If Laguna

Beach loses its unique character, then people will stop coming. We’re

a board that’s forcing people to stay smaller.”

Board member Eve Plumb hopes the trend will be toward even smaller

approvals.

“In five years,” Plumb said, “everything will be too big and

people will be reaching out their windows shaking hands. We need to

be more restrictive and think about what’s left.”

A written suggestion to improve the design review process from

Dicterow asks that the board “clearly establish the policy that one

of the intended purposes of the DRB is to help facilitate resolution

of differences between applicants and neighbors.”

Morrison isn’t enthusiastic about assuming a role as a

peace-keeper between dueling proponents and opponents.

“Our job is to make sure all codes are upheld and to protect the

integrity of the neighborhood’s design. We’re not negotiators or

mediators or marriage counselors. Moving in that direction could get

dangerous.”

Resident Fred Sattler, who has participated in the design review

process five or six times, including once on his own house, has seen

different Design Review Boards make decisions that have improved the

integrity of more than one neighborhood.

He said every project is unique, but each applicant has the

ability to simplify the process.

“Six or seven years ago,” Sattler said, “when working on my house,

we were aware of our neighbors and followed the guidelines, and the

project was approved.

“People who own houses here like to try to push the envelope in

terms of design. Whether they’ve lived here a while or are new to

Laguna Beach, some people want to have their house match their ideal

vision, regardless of how it fits with the landscape or their

neighbors’ thoughts. People tend to lose their civility when it comes

to their houses.”

Plumb said people’s responses to what the board does are more

civil than it sometimes seems.

“Each one of us has received thanks for representing the voice of

the underdog,” she said. “The only people who write letters are the

unhappy ones, so it seems like the naysayers outnumber the

supporters, but that isn’t so. I hear more positive than negative

feedback.”

* MIKE SWANSON is a reporter for the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

He covers education, public safety and City Hall. He can be reached

at 494-4321 or mike.swanson@latimes.com.