SOUNDING OFF

We love our neighborhoods in South Laguna — indeed, the scale of them is one of the things that make us feel at home and comfortable here. The city has some rules designed to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, such as the requirement in the design-review section of the municipal code that new structures be compatible in scale with their neighbors.

In 2000, the City Council directed the planning commission to “consider ways to moderate the size of new homes and remodels” in Laguna Beach. A major purpose of the effort was to make new construction more compatible with surrounding neighborhoods.

After two years of workshops and public meetings, the planning commission proposed to the council a series of amendments to the zoning ordinances intended to address the problem of overlarge houses. These were adopted, and this group of amendments is commonly referred to as the “mansionization” ordinance.

Since then, however, these rules haven’t been working as we believe was intended. It is the perception of the South Laguna Civic Assn. that, despite the existence of the mansionization ordinance, larger and larger new residences are proliferating in this city.

In short, residences far in excess of 5,000 square feet often with garages accommodating six or more vehicles are “mansions” under any definition of the word. In our neighborhoods, for example, oversized and out-of-character houses have been approved for construction on Ceanothus Drive, and in addition there is the now-infamous Mar Vista mansion.

The revision of the land-use element of the general plan that is now underway seems to us a good opportunity to write into law some more effective protections for the neighborhoods that we value. The draft element does, in fact, include a policy for preserving the character of our neighborhoods, but the actions proposed to implement it are vague and weak, and one important action is missing altogether: a commitment to develop neighborhood-specific house-size limits citywide.

The existing proposal of neighborhood specific plans doesn’t meet the need we see for immediate action. Specific plans take a long time to develop, and the number of them that would be required is daunting. We have a problem with oversized houses, and it has to be addressed quickly.

We do believe that the rules must quickly become quantitative, rather than simply qualitative. We are convinced that the present ordinance is failing rather dismally because it does not:

Our older housing stock is being purchased, demolished and replaced with much larger structures, and if something isn’t done — and done soon — including the overhaul or replacement of the existing ordinance, we are at risk of becoming a city in which mansions predominate.

A number of cities have house-size limits, and even in Laguna Beach we have neighborhood-specific limits in Three Arch Bay, the Village Community Zone for the village area of South Laguna and Arch Beach Heights.

We strongly urge you to include the immediate development of neighborhood-specific house-size limits in the revised land use element. A number of ideas are circulating about what such limits should consist of.

We look forward to participating in the process of developing the details of the land-use element revision and the specifics of the ordinances once the process is initiated.