On Dec. 17, City Council will review the draft Downtown Specific Plan (DSP) that will enable significant changes in the look and feel of downtown. The DSP looks for improvements in downtown by increasing density and sacrificing the world-wide brand recognition that Laguna Beach enjoys.
Laguna’s value is the ocean, the beach, and the human scale of our downtown. Even the town’s 1950s cottages sell for over $2 million—not because of the night life or potential for more night life, but because of the overall charm. The resident-serving action for City Council would be to protect the value of what we have.
Arguments are being made that something has to be done to make downtown more viable economically. Having a vacant hotel, movie theater, and Tommy Bahama’s are used as evidence that something must be done. Ironically, the new DSP draft does nothing to address the viability of any of these examples. They are vacant for completely different reasons than anything in the current or proposed DSP. They already have grandfathered parking, height, and density.
Vacant buildings downtown are more the result of normal economic forces at work. If any of us try to sell a home and can’t find a buyer, then we lower the price. If there is a rental vacancy for an extended period of time, the wise move for a landlord would be to adapt to the new situation and lower the rent. If we truly believe in the open, free market, then we realize that there is a market price for each and every square foot of downtown space. Let the market begin the healing process today by matching the expectations of landlords and tenants in the Laguna that already demonstrates its value to residents, visitors, and the traditional Laguna merchants and hospitality venues.
It is true that increasing density may be beneficial to the current landowners by providing more footage upon which to collect rent, but that would not justify sacrificing the value of the current downtown configuration. It is the landlords’ anticipation of more generous zoning provisions that drives anticipation of higher property values which then results in higher rents. Turning back the escalation of expectations has the effect of lowering rents to the market-equilibrium point that our traditional merchants need to survive in this environment. Conversely, allowing the anticipation of more density will bid up property values and bid up rent at the detriment of the traditional Laguna merchants and hospitality venues and will actually make it more difficult for them to succeed. The new DSP draft would sow the seeds of continued turnover in a redevelopment-fueled downtown.
Laguna will certainly continue to evolve and change with the times. Businesses will come and go, buildings will come and go, and rents will fluctuate as dictated by the economic conditions. As that happens, I believe that commercial development projects should:
Be unique, not part of large, monolithic development.
Be responsible—each project mitigates its impact on neighbors and residents. This includes traffic, parking, scale, compatibility, and aesthetics.
Be flexible, so individual business owners make their own decisions on how to use their space to meet the market’s needs.
Be innovative in finding ways to preserve the well-known value of Laguna’s look and feel.
Let’s urge our city to completely review and overhaul the draft DSP and come back to us with the changes necessary to implement this philosophy.
David Raber, Laguna Beach
