City breaks ground, alters course for digester building
By Allison Jarrell and Daniel Langhorne | LB Indy
After decades of planning, city officials finally broke ground on the long-awaited Village Entrance project on Tuesday, Sept. 11.
Residents have likely already noticed some crowding in the parking lots at the project site—parking will still be available until January 2019, at which point some lots will close entirely for construction.
City parking permit policies will not change during construction, and the weekly Farmer’s Market will remain in the Lumberyard Lot until spring of 2020, when it will move to the new Lot 11.
The Village Entrance project, which has been more than four decades in the making, is slated to be completed by summer of 2020. The project site, across from City Hall near the intersection of Laguna Canyon Road and Forest Avenue, is currently used by the city for parking, storage, facilities and a sewer lift station.
The new Village Entrance design will incorporate landscaped multi-use pathways, improved lighting, new bridges, and repaved parking lots. Other elements include a new vehicle bridge aligned with the traffic signal at the Festival of Arts, new buildings for police support services and Marine Safety storage, the planting of 120 new trees, and the addition of 52 bicycle racks. The council also voted to spend up to $436,358 to upgrade the fencing along the drainage channel.
The Laguna Beach City Council voted last month to move forward with the project and award an $8.4 million construction contract to C.S. Legacy Construction for the Village Entrance project, which now has a price tag of $11.1 million. The city had initially budgeted $8.4 million total for the project.
“The path to this groundbreaking today has been a journey, but worth the wait,” said Mayor Kelly Boyd. “As a city, we finally have the opportunity to come together and build a beautiful, welcoming entrance to Laguna Beach that we can all be proud of. It took a while, but we did it right.”
Following the groundbreaking on Tuesday, the City Council voted to claw back $100,000 it previously allocated to paint and patch the exterior of the 1930s-era sewage digester building as part of the Village Entrance project.
Instead, city staff will explore how much it would cost to undertake a full restoration of the building inside and out, the cost of removing 60,000 gallons of wastewater and 40 cubic yards of sludge from the bottom of its concrete cistern, and potential grant opportunities to fund the project. In the meantime, the rest of the Village Entrance Project will move forward.
“We might as well find out what’s down there and what we’ll need to do to get rid of it,” Councilman Rob Zur Schmiede said.
Shohreh Dupuis, assistant city manager and director of public works, said that if the City Council wants to pursue a historic restoration of the 1,370-square-foot building, it’s projected to cost $40,000 to do an environmental assessment of the site and up to $50,000 to conduct a historic structure report. This report would examine its design elements, whether it’s structurally sound, and what it would take to restore it.
Altogether, the city would have to spend $90,000 just to determine how much the digester building’s restoration will cost.
Mayor Kelly Boyd and Councilmen Bob Whalen and Steve Dicterow balked at the idea of spending upwards of $1 million on the project, but were willing to wait for a final decision until the city’s consultants come back with an estimate for the cost of construction.
“I think this is an interesting and quirky building,” Dicterow said. “I would not vote for spending $1 million of city money on it.”
If the City Council decides to restore the building, one of the ideas being floated is to use it for public restrooms, which Councilwoman Toni Iseman said are desperately needed in the area of Forest Avenue and Laguna Canyon Road. There are public restrooms at City Hall, but they’re closed at night and on the weekend.
Despite the need for public restrooms, Boyd said he didn’t think that spending $1 million on a building that would serve as a couple of bathrooms was a good use of tax dollars.
The idea to turn the digester building into a restaurant sounded unappealing to Laguna Beach resident Mary Williams, considering the property was once used to process sewage,
“If I were going to put in a restaurant, it wouldn’t be over a sewage plant,” Williams said.
Laguna resident Pat Gallis was also among a group of residents who said that the building had served its purpose and it was time for it to be demolished to make way for something else.
Architect Morris Skenderian, who was part of the team that designed the Village Entrance, said he supported restoring and repurposing the building to make it functional rather than putting a fresh exterior on it. Before the city can do this, it must go through the process of studying the environmental conditions and the historic integrity of the site.
“That’s the only way you’re going to get a competitive bid on what really should happen to this building,” Skenderian said. “At the end of the day, it may be way too expensive, however, you won’t know that [if you don’t.]”
Zur Schmiede and Whalen suggested that city staffers explore opportunities to apply for grants that could help fund the preservation of the digester building.
love the photo… burying a CAR??
Don’t forget the research by Mr. Menne about the vanishing NOW 120 DOWNTOWN PARKING PLACES… /// paul Merritt CANDIDATE for CLEAN CITY GOVT.
loses 116 Existing Parking Spaces!
The City Planning Commissioner Kemp And City Council Members Iseman & Zur Schmiede, all Voted to approve in October 2017 & Jan. 2018 the VE Project despite the Fact that Residents & Businesses will lose 116 net Parking Spaces countable on the ground within the project boundary (poof-vanishing into thin air for us to look & circle town in vain to find). The City has only been reporting to the Residents and Calif. Coastal Commission(CCC)for the last 4 years of “planning” and public meetings and communications-including in the official Mitigated Negative Declaration document they created by Right in having a Local Coastal Plan(LCP -authorized by the CCC) that we have 397 parking spaces existing in the Project area and their new VE project will net “388 spaces” and stated we’re losing just “10 spaces” with the New Design. The deception to the public, Residents and Business owners was uncovered with the careful review of the 105 page Construction Document Plans now available on City Website I just found. The actual project boundary that has existed since 1st discussed at CC Workshop on 11/12/13 in City Hall Chambers attended by 100’s of Residents, with 6 page City printed Handouts stating 397 existing + 65 existing gravel City Parking spaces for last few years adjacent to Tivoli Too(Summer private Parking & Christmas tree lot that has been used for decades for Festivals,Art A Fair and Event as parking as well as being purchased in 2014 by City for $5.3 million/counted as Lot 16 with 65 revenue earning gravel City Parking Spaces). This actually equals a never disclosed 462 City Parking Spaces (status quo)that should have been known to public to evaluate, in my opinion fraudulently omitted and concealed to gain approval & finally “Just Build Something’ by election. (My City 9/12/18 mtg-with Dupris, ZurSchmiede and Les Miklosy confirmed 462 existing onsite parking spaces in City Property now). Further use of deceptive City math on the Parking Count Chart Displayed on Sheet 1- where 24 spaces on Caltrans R.O.W. are added on Laguna Cyn. Rd. outside the Project area, an ‘Equivalent 14 bicycle and 4 motorcycle spaces are counted, (even though I omitted in my review to just use car spaces), as dozens of Motorcycle spaces exist today, and is even more embarrassing as to Apple to Apple comparison. (These equivalent 104 bicycle spaces were merely added 52 cluttered bike racks right in the main VIEW entry opposite FOA venue to make up for a shortfall in design- 1 car space=8 bicycle, is overkill and not necessary- not reflecting Art Patron Wedding event user profile ). So actually the City VE Project only provides 388-24–4-14= 346 proposed car Parking spaces 462-346= 116 LOST spaces City approved about double of the $6.1 million 2013 Budget, now at $11.3 million!!! Do you think both Art Festivals Boards, Laguna Playhouse Trustees, Art Affair /Tivoli Too-777 Owner, Laguna Residents or Businesses and Coastal Commission would have approved this project with those Public access losses of these directly adjacent parking spaces/ lots when we are already so short of Parking and circling cars searching for a space choking our town with traffic during the Summer Festival & Beach Season… I think not….What Do You SAY??? This project should be revised to plan to at least retain our existing Parking Spaces ( per LB City General Plan – Policy 6H- 1 for 1 parking space replacement in Central Business District) , and could still provide an additional 50 spaces to alleviate the inundation the Trolleys promote into Our peripheral Neighborhoods all over town. I’m not trying to obstruct, as I’ve presented / had solutions for an Alternative Plan at City’s CC Workshop in 2013 that’s more pertinent that ever to resolve VE Project losses under construction & not allow a planned mistake to make it far worse than exists. We can still have our Trail connections underway & Park Landscape to keep moving forward while amending the plan, but let’s build it right for our Residents, Businesses , Visitors & Patrons of the Arts. (I’m a 50+ year Resident & Land Planner) It’s high time the City stops raiding its Parking fund for the last 40+ years and provides these needed spaces downtown and directly adjacent to Festivals , not by removing another 116 spaces here, and another 18 spaces in front of FOA approved last Year at its Main Gate remodel. This total lost 134 spaces are more than all of the Current spaces on Forest Ave. from PCH to Laguna Cyn. Rd. -which has 131 existing car pkg. spaces…we can only imagine how bad it will be next Summer….