Laguna’s State of the City flavored with renovation feats and traffic challenges

What phrase describes Laguna Beach?

The response may differ depending on the person.

For Mayor Toni Iseman, the answer is: “Just the same, only better.”

Iseman said that during Monday’s State of the City luncheon at the Montage Laguna Beach.

The annual event, organized by the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce, offered an opportunity for the mayor and City Manager John Pietig to brief attendees on the key issues facing Laguna.

The list included the usual topics of traffic, tourism and parking.

Iseman anchored her speech by speaking of restored buildings and spaces throughout the city, such as the Heisler building and former space of The Cottage that is now Urth Caffe, as photos of those sites projected onto a screen.

“Look at where we are,” Iseman said of the Montage resort, which sits on land that at one time housed a mobile-home park. “Most of us had no idea what was there. It was gated. Now we don’t just have the Montage, but a park.

“It’s open to all of us.”

She hailed the Festival of Arts renovation and the city’s trolley system that Laguna staff have tinkered with in the past couple of years to address demand.

One million passengers boarded city trolleys and buses in the 2015-16 fiscal year, an increase from 440,000 in 2005-06, Public Works Director Shohreh Dupuis confirmed in an email.

Laguna long has been a destination for visitors seeking a relaxing day at the beach, or a hike in one of the many acres of open space.

But Iseman and Pietig reiterated a concern voiced in recent months that housing developments in inland cities will create even more traffic congestion in Laguna.

City officials said nearly 27,000 single or multi-family housing units have been approved in South Orange County in the past 10 years, and 2,500 more are in the pipeline.

That information came from a decade’s worth of environmental impact reports from Irvine, Lake Forest, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills and the county of Orange, according to Laguna staff.

Pietig suggested a transit service from the inland cities to carry passengers to Laguna who might otherwise hop in their cars.

“If we’re not going to expand lanes on Laguna Canyon Road, there are very few options to deal with traffic congestion,” Pietig said.

This summer the city again will partner with the Orange County Transportation Authority and Irvine Co. to shuttle passengers into Laguna during weekends from a parking lot near the 405 Freeway and Highway 133.

In addition, the city will ratchet up parking-meter rates downtown this summer —to $3.75 an hour from last summer’s $3 — in hopes of deterring visitors to park at peripheral lots and take public transportation into Laguna.

“We all deal with the pressure of making it livable in our community,” Iseman said.

“We have work to do, but we have help.”

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Twitter: @AldertonBryce