Toll road hearing moved

No news is not good news for the Transportation Corridor Agency.

The agency still hadn’t heard on Thursday morning the new location for its appeal hearing on the California Coastal Commission’s denial of the proposed route through a state park for the 241 Toll Way.

The hearing was scheduled for Wednesday at the Bren Center on the UC Irvine campus, but was canceled by university officials.

“The scope of the event was growing beyond our ability to handle it, given the other events in the same area, including a children’s summer camp and student-parent orientation scheduled for the same day and university administrators began to get worried,” university spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said.

The agency learned Friday that the venue would be changed, but was not advised of a new location or whether the relocation would delay the hearing.

“We’re very disappointed,” agency spokeswoman Jennifer Seaton said. “We thought Bren Center was a great venue because it was so close to the communities affected by the traffic that the 241 is designed to relieve.”

Bren Center can seat about 4,500.

The original estimate for the crowed expected to attend the appeal hearing was 3,000 to 3,500 — the number of people who attended the commission hearing in February, held on the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

The crowd included Mayor Jane Egly and Councilwoman Toni Iseman in the sizable contingent of Laguna Beach residents who opposed routing the toll road through San Onofre State Park and celebrated the denial.

The agency appealed the commission decision to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Toll road opponents’ efforts to drum up attendance at the appeal hearing began to bear fruit — apparently a bumper crop.

“When we began to get calls asking where to get lunch for 500, we said ‘whoa!’” Lawhon said. “We couldn’t limit the crowd by [issuing] tickets because it is a public hearing.”

University officials felt compelled to call a halt and notified the federal department.

Agency officials have had no further word since Friday on a date or site for the hearing, according to Seaton.

“We are just waiting to hear from the department of commerce,” Seaton said.

BARBARA DIAMOND can be reached at (949) 494-4321 or coastlinepilot@latimes.com.