Hotel Expansions Raise Questions Over Traffic

By Allison Jarrell, Special to the Independent

Expectations that three hotel expansions in Laguna Beach will add to congestion in coming years prompted discussion this week about the short-comings of the city’s current approval process that evaluates projects individually.

The Laguna Beach City Council and Planning Commission met in a joint session on Tuesday, May 1, that covered a multitude of issues, including how to accommodate increased demand for parking and the cumulative traffic impact of new large development projects.

The three hotel projects likely referenced by the Planning Commission’s agenda are redevelopment of the now-closed Hotel Laguna, expansion of the Holiday Inn and a hotel as-yet-unbuilt on a parking lot near the Royal Hawaiian restaurant, the latter two owned by local resident Mo Honarkar. The stalled Coast Inn expansion could also be part of the equation.

The first mention of a new hotel surfaced in a city parking plan last fall. Honarkar has declined to return calls to address questions about the plan.

Greg Pfost, the city’s community development director, declined to provide details regarding the three hotel projects, as two of the developers have only made the city aware of their interest and have not yet submitted applications. “Everything is very preliminary right now,” Pfost said.

The North Laguna hotel project has progressed further than the other two, Pfost said, with city staff preparing a potential concept review for the Planning Commission that could take place as early as June. The meeting would allow the public to see the general idea of the developer’s proposal, as well as provide the developer with feedback from the commission and the community.

Planning Commission Chair Susan Whitin brought up the upcoming concept review at the meeting on Tuesday, asking if any traffic analysis has been completed. Pfost said the review only involves the general project description, and a traffic analysis will be submitted with the development application later on in the process.

“What we’re saying is…we would like to see this project, plus the cumulative impact of the other known projects,” Whitin said. “How does that get done?”

Commission member Roger McErlane suggested a traffic model, and Mayor Pro Tem Rob Zur Schmiede asked city staff if such a model—in which a developer could input their project data—would be possible to implement in Laguna.

Assistant City Manager Shohreh Dupuis said the city’s current traffic operation model looks specifically at traffic signals, signal timing, traffic counts and turning movements, and is unable to accommodate changes inland use.

“In order to have that model, the developers or the city has to invest in that type of a land use-driven model, to be able to model all of the projects together,” Dupuis said. She estimated that it could cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 to create.

City Manager John Pietig added that any potential parking studies are currently on hold as the city explores potential funding sources for undergrounding overhead utility wires. Pietig said the city’s parking fund balance could be used to help invest in public-private parking structures, giving examples of similar parking arrangements at ACT V in Laguna Canyon, on Third Street and lower Cliff Drive.

Pietig also mentioned preliminary offers of public-private parking arrangements related to a hotel project in North Laguna, a hotel on Cleo Street (the existing Holiday Inn), Hotel Laguna and a commercial center in Laguna Canyon Road renamed The Hive.

“All of those are potential opportunities where people need to build parking for their developments,” Pietig said. “They have approached the city and said, ‘Does the city want to invest if it can also acquire additional public parking?’ But at the moment, those are on hold until we decide as a community what we want to do with undergrounding.”

Pietig suggested staff develop a proposal for council consideration that taps developers with major projects pending to fund a traffic model. Zur Schmiede agreed with Pietig, pointing to other cities that have asked developers to pay for computer modeling.

“If we need to augment this modeling that we have to allow for other inputs, I think we should do it,” Zur Schmiede said. “We’ve got several of these large-scale projects, that if they all split it up, it’s probably not that big of an ask.”