Laguna Beach holds town hall on Ocean Avenue redesign as businesses warn one-way plan could hurt downtown

Laguna Beach held a community town hall to review concept-level designs for Ocean Avenue and portions of Beach Street, where staff outlined proposed sidewalk replacement, tree-well improvements and a traffic study that could convert Lower Ocean Avenue to a one-way street.

Pierre Sawaya, the city’s capital program manager in public works, said staff have completed corridor survey and utility mapping and commissioned a third-party arborist to assess roughly 79 trees along the route. “A one-way study for the portion of Lower Ocean Avenue between Beach Street and South Coast Highway was performed by KOA, and that item will be presented to city council on November 18,” Sawaya said, describing that meeting as the occasion when council will provide direction on the one-way option.

Evan Lee, a landscape architect with SWA Group, walked through concept ideas to preserve Ocean Avenue’s pedestrian character while simplifying paving with a 2-foot by 2-foot saw-cut grid, improving tree wells (using tree grates or decomposed granite), adding planting…