Appreciating Change
It’s been 50 years since the UC Irvine campus opened, and there has been ample publicity about how the university has grown and all its academic achievements. But as we think about it, it’s not just the campus, the research and the students, UCI’s influence has changed our town and even our county history.
Fred Lang once told me, “The opening of UCI was a landmark event for Laguna; the leadership of the town began to move away from the boosters, business people who wanted growth, and transitioned to residents with more environmental points of view.”
Fred had been working at the campus for several years before the 1965 opening. He was part of the design team that created the landscape architecture. The ring of grand Eucalyptus, the entry of Norfolk Island pines, and the succulent garden in the center of the campus were all his design. So he had a special caring for the campus. But he cared about Laguna most of all. By the early 1970s when I met him he was already noticing our town changing.
Perhaps he had a special perspective on community change. After all he had grown up in a beautiful German town, a city of the arts. He used to say Laguna reminded him of his boyhood community. Yet, he witnessed the transformation of his town into a hateful setting that he had to leave at age 19. The Nazis had just passed laws limiting the education and occupations open to Jews. “Probably you could just collect old paper,” Fred grumbled. Yet he was fortunate enough to have been able to leave before it got much, much worse. How revitalizing it must have been to see his adopted home town changing in such a positive way, one that promised a bright future with preservation of the town and its environment at its core.
UCI joined with Project 21, a private citizens program, founded by John Lawson of Ford Aeroneutronics, to research and plan Orange County’s future. Fred was part of the Project 21 open space team. He was energized by the opportunities to provide for preserving creeks and meaningful open space as the county developed. This pioneering effort eventually led to Aliso Creek and Laguna Greenbelt preservation.
Three-time mayor Bob Gentry, former associate dean of students at UCI and LGBT pioneer, comments, “So many faculty and staff settled in Laguna as the campus began to grow and develop.” Housing was actually less expensive here.
Randy Lewis who worked with Gentry at UCI, and who came to Laguna in 1971, recalls that what attracted UCI people was that “Laguna had character and ambiance, counter to what was available in the new city of Irvine. The counter-culture tradition was appealing.”
There is a long list of people who arrived here because of their connection with UCI and who played important roles in the Laguna Beach community:
Peter Bowler (Laguna Greenbelt), Phil Rundel (height limit initiative signator), Kathy Jones (height initiative activist and Laguna Greenbelt), Becky Jones (planning commission), Becky and Joie Jones (writers of a food column in the local paper), Pete Fielding (consortium to fight the coastal freeway planned through Laguna Beach, contributor to the South Laguna General Plan and director of Orange County Transportation Authority), Durand Bell (organized a march to protest racial discrimination in Monarch Bay), Jon Brand (mayor), Barbara Metzger (design review and planning commission), Jim Danziger (South Laguna Civic Association, active in annexation to Laguna Beach), Robert and Estelle Warner (Temple Hills Community Association, founding member of the Council of Neighborhood Associations), Ross Conner (planning commission), Dan Wooldridge (planning commission), Judith Hamburger (planning commission), Anne Frank (heritage committee), Dick Frank (Democratic Club), John and Rosemary Boyd (Village Laguna), Morrie and Barb Granger (South Laguna Community Garden), Kate Clark (Village Laguna and Laguna Greenbelt). Ann Tashjian (assisted the homeless), Gordon and Lorna Shaw (Temple Hills Community Association), Bob and Ginnie Josephson (Top of the World), Robert and Lorna Cohen (Resource Center).
And then there are the graduates of UCI—Elisabeth Brown (president of the Laguna Greenbelt), Jan Vickers, (school board), and Gail McClain (Thurston teacher), and, of course, many more.
“There was a window of about 15 years when housing in Laguna Beach was affordable for faculty and staff; then the party was over.” Lewis points out. “The UCI people inserted another point of view into the community dialog; they could frame issues from an academic perspective.” That brought substance to the environmental activism that was bubbling up, mainly focused around preserving open space and the traditional village character of the town. Many others led and were active in these causes as well.
But Gentry maintains, “I don’t think we could have preserved the canyon without the strong support of the UCI core group that resided in Laguna.”
This preservation work was so successful at creating a desirable community that Laguna Beach property values are now among the highest in the county. As good as that sounds to someone who owns a home, it means housing costs have gone beyond the reach of most people. Is there a new crop of concerned environmentalists coming? Are we now in the throes of mammoth change? Not back to boosterism, but to another view. A more narrow, self-centered view, an “I want my money’s worth” way of looking at Laguna Beach.
Is the Laguna vibe strong enough to survive this new wave of change?
One new resident thinks so. “I don’t mind driving home from work. I get to drive through Crystal Cove or through the Greenbelt. It tells me something special is ahead. I know that somebody has worked really hard to make this community unique. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m going to find out.”
Landscape architect Ann Christoph is a former council member.
