At the Planning Commission meeting on the Cleo Street project on Wednesday, Nov. 7, someone attempting to defend the project against charges of incompatibility with the neighborhood asked rhetorically, “Who decided Laguna is supposed to look a certain way?”
The answer to that would be, “More than in most places, the community.” This distinctive idea goes back to the town’s beginnings.
The plein air painters set the tone by helping spread the word about the beauty of Laguna, and early residents took every opportunity to preserve and enhance it. In 1925, the Woman’s Club launched a campaign to make Laguna “the Paradise of the Pacific,” distributing 700 trees for planting on Arbor Day. Photographs of new houses “in the Laguna spirit” were often featured in the newspaper, and artists such as Anna Hills and Frank Cuprien played key roles in city planning.
The city’s first improvement project was announced in the South Coast News in February 1931 with a rendering of the proposed building and the headline, “New Laguna Sewage Treatment Plant is Attractive in Design.” The city’s first land use plan, adopted in 1940, included restrictions on building size, and its 1959 General Plan called for “keeping residential and commercial development in the central area low.” When the Planning Commission proposed a maximum height of 50 feet in 1971, a citizens’ group circulated petitions for an initiative that would limit buildings citywide to 36 feet, and 75 percent of the voters said yes.
Throughout the course of the 70s, as development around Laguna intensified, the city found additional ways of preserving its character, including a program for preserving heritage trees and a historic register that today includes more than 300 homes. Design review of proposed development was required as early as 1972 and extended to residences in 1986. In the early 1970s, Fred Lang led the South Laguna Civic Association in preparing the South Laguna Specific Plan, which led to the creation of the Village Green and the preservation of the hillsides. The Downtown Specific Plan, adopted in 1989, was designed to protect the downtown’s small scale and variety of shops and services.
These measures have been kept up-to-date over the years, and at the meeting on Nov. 7, it was apparent that community concern about how Laguna is supposed to look is alive and well.
Village Laguna Board of Directors
