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| Name of Organization: | Laguna Greenbelt |
| Date of Workshop: | July 10, 2000 |
| Number of Participants: | 8 |
| Facilitator: | J. Trivett and D. Black |
Summary of Assets
The group identified the following community assets during
group discussion and on written comment cards.
The Environment
Natural environment
- Greenbelt, open spaces, hillsides
- Ocean, small cove beaches
- Clean beaches and water
- Topography, limits growth
- Climate, weather
Geographic location
- Close to major cities but still remote
Housing / Residential Development
Downtown / Commercial Development
- Ambiance, village atmosphere, architecture
- No manufacturing
- Eclectic styles of business and people
- Downtown from Wave Ave to Diamond
- Vibrant downtown
- Height limits in architecture
Infrastructure
- Excellent police and fire departments
- Recreational opportunities
- Centrally located library
- Safe city, neighborhoods
The People
Education
- Good public education system
- Highly educated people
- Local schools support organization
Community organizations
- History of women’s, civic, and educational organizations
Activist citizenry / values / diversity
- People and residents
- Volunteerism, lots of civic organizations
- Community involvement and participation
- Diverse ethnic representation
- Active neighborhood organizations
The Community
Arts and Culture
- Pageant of the Masters
- Museums, art galleries
- Sawdust Festival
Image and Identity
- Community character of openness
- Diversely trained professionals
- International reputation
- Cohesive community
- Uniqueness that has been maintained despite outside influences
Governance
- Adherence, enforced general plan
- Ordinances and commissioners that implement height size limits
Summary of Challenges
The group identified the following community challenges
during group discussion and on written comment cards.
The Environment
Natural environment
- Ensure clean water
- Protect open spaces from encroachment, maintaining green belt
- Ocean pollution
- Continue to control growth and protect open spaces from development
Housing / Residential Development
- Affordable housing
- “Mansionization” of homes
- Hillside development
Downtown / Commercial Development
- No room for growth but people wanting to move here
- Encroaching of malls and outlets, warehouse stores competing with local merchants
- Development of undeveloped parcels
- Maintain village atmosphere, streetscape, vistas
- Maintaining building restrictions
Transportation
- Increase parking spaces for downtown visitors and residents
- Traffic, circulation
Infrastructure
- Securing high level of public safety
The People
Education
- Educate all residents on pollution and safety
Children/youth
- Community involvement of our youth
Seniors
- Aging population, attracting younger families (upscale nuclear families)
Communications
- Retrofit electronic network for all citizens, informed as to when and where each and every committee and community organization meets. Informed citizen is crucial. Other cities do it
Activist citizenry / values / diversity
Health
- Improve medical calls locally
- Improve medical facilities
The Community
Image and Identity
- Maintaining its charm, uniqueness
- Not pricing ourselves out of the market
- Maintaining a community that includes people who volunteer and support unique activities and programs
Economy
- Secure balanced income stream for City treasury
- Holding business of tourism in place
- Accommodating increase in visitors
- Tourists
- Influx of day workers and low paying employees
- High cost of real estate
- Not business friendly
Governance
- Ensure evolutionary change (not revolutionary so as to protect our character)
- Improve business friendliness, i.e. friendliness of city government to business
Outside Issues
- Impact of growth in surrounding areas
- Learning to deal with the outside population
Summary of Visions
The group identified the following as major visions for
Laguna Beach during group discussion and on written comment cards.
The Environment
Natural environment
- More protected, preserved open space
- Preserve greenbelt at open edges
- Clean
Housing / Residential Development
Downtown / Commercial Development
- Maintain ambiance, character
Transportation
- Secure parking and people mover system
- More peripheral parking, remote parking facilities
- Remove cars from main village area
- Laguna Canyon Road as arts district with tunnels under a pedestrian area
- Park from city hall to ocean with pedestrian friendly shops
- Underground Coast Highway
- Small pedestrian bridges over Coast Highway and traffic calming
Infrastructure
- Improve access to Wilderness Park trails
- Upgrade infrastructure (clean water, citywide underground utilities, parking, trams, schools)
The People
Education
- Continue to improve school infrastructure
Communications
- Highly connected and informed citizenry involved in protecting citizen rights and environment
- Better communication
- Closer integration or better information about opportunities
- Better relations with neighboring cities
Activist citizenry / values / diversity
- Highly involved volunteerism to provide moral, ethical and activist goals
- Diverse ages
The Community
Arts and Culture
- Greater diversity of entertainment in Irvine Bowl
Image and Identity
- Remain the city that we love, enjoy yesterday and today (same population, improved services)
- Less people
- Romantic
- User friendly
- Remain small town with people who care
Economy
Governance
- Equitable view protection
- Better prepared for natural disasters
Summary of Opportunities
The group identified the following opportunities during
group discussion and on written comment cards.
The People
Activist citizenry / values / diversity
- Engage more citizens, students, retirees, merchants
- Increased service on planning committees, assistance with conservation and education efforts
The Community
Governance
- Vision is a good start, need endurable, smart, timely, specific, realistic and measurable goals and strong implementation plan
- Develop public/private partnerships to preserve and protect existing open space and acquire what is still available
- Ensure a city management that supports the vision plan
- Maintain updating of General Plan and enforce implementation
- Realize that combustion engine must be abolished
- Continued accountability of individual council members to voters
- Create a Design Review Board
- Develop a strong specific plan mechanism
- Ensure strong city government, city manager, elected council, volunteer committees
- Look for new ideas to support the city’s vision
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