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Laguna Beach holds CEQA scoping meeting for Downtown Specific Plan Phase 2; residents press wildfire, parking and view concerns
Summary
City staff and consultants opened environmental scoping for the Downtown Specific Plan Phase 2 program EIR on Feb. 4; they outlined topics to be studied and urged environmental comments by Feb. 25. Residents pressed the consultants to analyze evacuation capacity, parking impacts, viewsheds and coastal risks.
Planning commissioners, city staff and consultants opened the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) scoping process Feb. 4 for the Downtown Specific Plan Phase 2 update, a program-level EIR intended to analyze potential environmental impacts of proposed downtown housing and related changes.
Kate Kazama, the project planner, summarized the proposed updates: allow residential uses in most downtown zones, expand artist live/work units (subject to conditional-use permits), study raising building heights to permit two- and three-story development in many blocks, authorize select lot mergers in excess of 5,000 square feet for qualifying housing projects, and reduce parking requirements (staff noted a proposed reduction to about 0.5 parking spaces per unit). The NOP states the EIR would establish a maximum residential unit cap of no more than 450 units for downtown and, for analytical flexibility, model up to 675…
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