City acquires lots for open space

Laguna spends $600,000 for Arch Beach properties; deal will prevent possible lawsuits over access roads.Ending contention over hillside development in one area of Laguna Beach, City Manager Ken Frank announced Dec. 30 that the city had purchased 12 vacant lots in Arch Beach Heights.

The lots were bought for $600,000 from Polo Properties, owned primarily by David Spangenberg, and will become permanent open space. Some of the lots, which are not contiguous, could become part of a park.

“The city often buys vacant lots to preserve as open space,” Assistant City Manager John Pietig said.

Negotiations on the Arch Beach lots had been underway for about six months after an overture by Spangenberg, City Atty. Phil Kohn said.

“It was presented in the context of avoiding litigation,” Kohn said.

Spangenberg was one of 19 plaintiffs in the Diamond Crestview litigation against the city, in which the courts ordered the city to provide access roads to properties the city contended were not legal building sites precisely because they had no public street access. Legal building sites must be accessible by city-maintained streets.

All of Spangenberg’s Arch Beach Heights lots abut so-called “paper streets,” which have no access to city-maintained rights of way.

“None of them are currently legal building sites,” Pietig said.

Development of lots on paper streets can be allowed if road extensions are approved, a complicated procedure that is of concern to city officials and environmentalists.

“It was a different world when paper streets were zoned,” said Carolyn Wood, president of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy and a long-time member of the city’s Parking, Traffic and Circulation Committee. “I don’t think anyone ever considered that any of the lots on paper streets would ever be built on.”

Since the settlement in 1998 of the decade-long Diamond Crestview legal battle, homes have proliferated in the formerly rural area.

“Development in Diamond Crestview has put a real burden on infrastructure, and we [the committee] are getting more and more people complaining about the narrow streets and lack of parking,” Wood said.

The Arch Beach lots are scattered between Inez and Palo Alto.

“Some of the lots could become pocket parks [small islands of open space in developed neighborhoods] or picnic areas or combined with future purchases,” Pietig said.

Funding for the purchase will come from the city’s Open Space Fund, from which the city has borrowed money to help pay for repairs after the June 1 landslide. The fund will be replenished by revenue from Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase approved by the voters in December.

The City Council authorized the offer to purchase the lots in a closed session in December, an action the Brown Act does not require the council to announce until the offer is accepted.