DRB ruling angers residents

Mike Swanson

About 30 Irvine Cove and Abalone Point residents attended a Tuesday

meeting called by Joan Irvine Smith to rally support against recent

city actions she said could affect the privacy and property values of

homes in their gated community.

The primary topic of conversation of the meeting was a one-acre

lot sold by Smith to Ron and Yolanda Loder that’s been in Design

Review for months and faces another hearing Oct. 9. The structure, as

of a Sept. 4 Design Review hearing, would consist of 13,278 square

feet of living space, 1,159 square feet of garage space and a 5,032

square-foot basement serving as a storage and mechanical area.

The proposed home would sit on a coastal bluff in Abalone Point,

significantly blocking the views of six Irvine Cove homes. Smith and

her son, James Irvine Swinden, sent letters to Irvine Cove residents

urging them to attend the meeting and listen to concerns about Laguna

Beach’s dismissal of property-rights law in favor of excessive

attention to view-equity concerns.

“We believe that if the city succeeds in restricting height in

Irvine Cove and Abalone Point, then the city may attempt to override

other community rules,” the letter says. “The city may require homes

to be reduced in height when they are remodeled.

“If the city is successful in overriding height rules, the city

might also attempt to overrule and ignore privacy rules, potentially

opening up the community to the public.”

The proposed Loder home is in an area in which community

guidelines allow houses to go a maximum of 14 feet above the curb.

Andy Alison, the only vocal opponent of the Loder project at the

Tuesday meeting, said about four feet above the curb would make view

equity more conducive to him and his neighbors, which the Design

Review Board has agreed with thus far.

As Alison tried to explain that he and his neighbors felt the

project was less about height and more about grading the house

gradually down from the curb toward the ocean, more than one of the

meeting’s attendees called his ideas ridiculous.

“You’re full of crap,” Smith told Alison.

Coastal Commission guidelines prevent excessive grading, Smith

said, and John Schaefer, a member of the Abalone Point Community

Assn. board, added that grading down would put the home on an unsafe

incline for its residents.

Stefan Manolakas, a neighbor of Alison’s who opposes the Loder

project as presented at the last Design Review Board meeting, said

with the amount of space available to the Loders, it shouldn’t be so

difficult to better accommodate the impacted neighbors.

“They’ll have an unbridled ability to enjoy their view without

affecting their neighbors no matter how low they go,” Manolakas said.

“Nothing that the city could ever impose could ever affect the

Loders’ whitewater view.”

For the majority of Irvine Cove residents, however, the issue is

more about the future.

They’re afraid the covenants, conditions and restrictions that

their community associations have created to govern community rules

are being devalued by the city. They fear city involvement could

extend to the point that their private beaches become public.

“Once you start tinkering with the regulations, [the city] can do

whatever they want,” Smith said.

Hal Brice, who opposed the Loder project at a May City Council

meeting, said he hasn’t been following the Loder situation closely

since but was surprised to hear it still hadn’t been settled. The

project was so close to meeting his approval in May, Brice said, and

he’d be ready to support the project at the next Design Review Board

meeting.

“This has gone too far,” Brice said. “The Loders have waited a

long time and they’ve done plenty to be approved by the city.”

Schaefer, who has appeared at Design Review Board meetings and

sent letters to City Council in support of the Loders, said the

Irvine Cove and Abalone Point communities have lost out for not being

as vocal as the opponents that they vastly outnumber. Schaefer called

the Design Review process horrendous.

Bruce Friedman, a board member of the Irvine Cove Assn., said they

should change that at the next Design Review Board meeting.

“As a community, we need more and more homeowners to speak up

about the [Design Review] process,” Friedman said. “If each neighbor

wants to speak to DRB about a project, their thoughts become more

influential. They’re looking for numbers.”

In past Design Review Board meetings, Alison, Manolakas and a few

others opposing the project have been “vindictive, mean-spirited and

out only for the good of themselves and not the community,” Irvine

Cove resident Harold Price said Tuesday. Several residents at the

meeting applauded in response.

Alison and Manolakas are concerned that too much leniency with the

Loder lot could wreak havoc upon the entire north end of Irvine Cove

if two other adjacent parcels owned by Smith are sold and built upon.

“We knew something would be built there, but we never expected it

to be subdivided,” Alison said. “There’s so much space there that one

huge house couldn’t possibly adversely affect our views. When the

land was subdivided, we knew there might be trouble.”

Manolakas said it’s only a matter of time before all three lots

are inhabited by houses, but he hopes the Design Review Board sets a

precedent with the first that preserves as much of Irvine Cove’s

views as possible.

“We hired an architect out of our own pockets to try and help with

the design so the neighbors could have more input,” Alison said. “But

Loder has this vision that he won’t back down from, and the board and

the city are doing a great job dealing with this as others who try

this in Laguna Beach are dealt with. They’re being tough when it

comes to protecting views.”

Members of the Design Review Board and the City Council wouldn’t

comment because the project’s approval is still pending. Councilman

Wayne Baglin said the Design Review Board and City Council act as

“quasi-judicious bodies” in cases of design review, and would be

doing the applicant, proponents and opponents a disservice if they

commented without reviewing all of the most current details.