MAILBAG: Brewery should not be pushed out of city

[Editor’s Note: The following letter was addressed to the Laguna Beach City Council and City Manager Mr. Ken Frank.]

I’m not sure if I have ever met each of you formally even though I have been to some city meetings, even to receive awards. I was born to this town 37 years ago. Although I have not participated much in the formalities and agendas of the city government, I have participated and even spearheaded many community activities of the arts, education and recreation.

I, too, love this town and what it is about. Laguna is almost like a mother to me. She has shown me so many wonderful experiences and has taught me amazing lessons of life, especially when my family’s house burned down in 1993.

This town has made me who I am; an artist, a teacher, an ocean lover, a philanthropist. I keep the preservation of who she is close to my heart.

I am writing to you concerning your actions against the Ocean Avenue Brewery. I would appreciate knowing what it is specifically that you find distasteful or disagreeable about the Ocean Avenue Brewery.

The owners are intelligent, compassionate, family people, whom I have personally helped run many humanitarian and environmental events.

These events have helped this community shine like no other. The first fundraiser I helped spearhead with the Brewery was for a dear friend of mine and an artist of the community, Dan Stafford, whose family has lived here for generations. He needed a kidney transplant and the Ocean Avenue Brewery and dozens of local artists and businesses helped raise $25,000 dollars through an amazing silent art auction and raffle and were helpful in also finding the eventual donor.

Since then, the Brewery and I have put together local and international fundraisers and benefits, mainly using local artist as the main focus for the auctions.

The Ocean Avenue Brewery is a positive part of this community. Why does it seem you are trying to push them out?

While it is said the council wants “mom and pop” businesses in town, it appears they are taking action in this case and others to push them out and let the chains or national brands like Tommy Bahama into the city.

It would be good if the city management and the council worked to keep local businesses strong. Let them work their magic so they can make the most of it for the locals who love these establishments like their own.

Have you spent any time in the Ocean Avenue Brewery enjoying a nice dinner, friendly service, and the warm ambience? Or maybe even come some night when local greats like Ken Garcia and his band are playing. If you haven’t, please do.

I really hope that the same people who are judging these businesses have taken the time to experience them and then make decisions based on the facts.

I would love to sit down with you and any other interested parties and get to the bottom of what is really the problem. Let’s get a positive vision going again for Laguna Beach.

Please e-mail me and let me know when you have some time available to meet. I would seriously like to know your thoughts and share mine so that we can both be working for what is the very best for Laguna Beach.

STEVEN R.CHEW

Laguna Beach

? Don’t pray, help

Yesterday was National Day of Prayer. Just in case those who prayed are disappointed with their prayer results, there is a Plan B. Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) offers: “Hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.” Whadayagotalose?

NIKO THERIS

Laguna Beach

? Athens project will alter Aliso property

At the April dinner meeting of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, landscape architect Bob Barthwick ran a slide show leavened with good-natured remarks that taught us all about invasive plants taking root here in Laguna Beach: pampas grass, artichoke thistle, cute little dandelions and other weeds. The seeds of such invaders are carried off by birds and dropped on unsuspecting land, where they take over.

Developers are pretty good at the same trick. They see what you and I think of as a piece of land. They see it as a cash cow, begging to be milked. We are witnessing such a development ready to invade Aliso Canyon. If unchecked, concrete will replace greenery. Roads and driveways will replace paths and trails. And Aliso Canyon will become a line on the corporate ledger of the Athens Group, a company with headquarters in Arizona.

I have no quarrel with those who want to make a profit from their investments. I have a quarrel with how it is achieved.

Today we have a piece of lovely land, peaceful, kind to the eyes and spirit. It exists under certain laws and rules and criteria. It sits in a zone, or in several zones.

Now Athens would change those zones. We have rules against changing the contours of the land in open space. You just can’t change zones willy-nilly. Athens wants to rewrite all these rules. It wants what it wants.

Some of the land it owns in Aliso Canyon sits on a floodplain. You can’t build on a floodplain. So, presto, Athens would elevate the land, so it rises above any foolish little floodplain. Our Open Space element says you can’t do this. Athens is plunging ahead, hoping to convince the Planning Commission and the City Council that Mother Nature sometimes needs a little nudge.

Truck in tons of earth, fill in the floodplain and build away to your heart’s content. It would change open space to filled space.

And it will have its way unless we “” the people “” stand firm and say no.

If we speak loudly enough, and we are a large enough group, the Planning Commission and the City Council will have difficulty saying “yes” to Athens and “no” to the people.

On Saturday, May 10, the Athens Group will open its canyon holdings to the public from 2 to 5 p.m. We will be permitted to walk about and look and ask. We will see where the Athens Group wants to reshape the golf course, redo its hotel, fix up its restaurant and build a residential component “” 45 homes with gigantic price tags, translating into some 500 additional car trips per day, exacerbating the already horrendous traffic on Coast Highway, pouring more poison into the air we breathe.

This open house is not as generous an act on the part of Athens as it may seem. At the Council Meeting, Athens wanted to hold it on a weekday, when many of us would be working. Fifteen speakers got up and said, “make it Saturday,” and, under the pressure of the numbers and the unity, the Council agreed. Make it Saturday.

So, put on your hiking boots. This is not a call to march “” at least not yet. Walk and talk. Ask of your Athens hosts exactly what they have in store for us, what seeds they plan to scatter. Where will Athens turn open space into 45 residential units? Why is the golf course being reshaped? What will happen to the eucalyptus grove? Why must the land be elevated? How long will the development take? How many trucks will be needed to take away how many tons of earth? How many vehicles will be disgorged onto South Coast Highway? How much? How many? How big?

And some of us are worried about dandelions.

ARNOLD HANO

Laguna Beach

? Make Forest a pedestrian zone

Super Kudos to Tom Ahern for advancing the absolute best idea for the Village Entrance Project. We need more parking “” the kind that gets people out of their cars and on foot in our pedestrian friendly town. And then we can turn Forest Avenue into a pedestrian mall and offset the parking loss with the new parking structure.

As Mr. Ahern suggests, let’s let a private developer build the structure at no cost to the city. They can get it done so much faster and more efficiently than the city, and in the process add additional retail services that could make the Village Entrance far more inviting and attractive. Or better yet, why don’t we build a performing arts center for live music concerts “” something our town sorely needs. And just as the Montage was willing to develop the lovely Treasure Island Beach Park, perhaps this developer could make the needed improvements along Laguna Canyon Road that would connect downtown with the arts district (seven degrees, Sawdust, etc.)in a cohesive way.

Let’s get this done. Everything could tie together beautifully to relieve congestion, create a “piazza” on Forest Avenue instead of a drive-through (thus relieving southbound congestion on South Coast Highway making a left turn onto Forest), increase city revenues by realizing additional sales tax from restaurants that serve al fresco, retail stores in the parking structure, and from parking revenues themselves.

If government can’t get this done, the people of Laguna certainly have the resources and ingenuity to do it ourselves.

BILLY FRIED

Laguna Beach