Now, It’s What to Do About the Tollway : Land-use: Laguna Beach opposes plans to build the road, but the Transportation Corridor Agencies and the Irvine Co. say they intend to proceed.

LAGUNA BEACH —  Although the fractious battle between the city of Laguna Beach and the Irvine Co. over Laguna Canyon has apparently been settled, the related question of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor tollway--scheduled to run through the canyon--remains in dispute.

Earlier this week, the Irvine Co. agreed to sell 2,150 acres of the area known as Laguna Laurel to the city for $78 million, scrapping plans for a 3,200-unit housing development and several commercial centers. Much of the first installment will come through a $20-million bond issue if voters approve it on the Nov. 6 ballot. All parties to the Laguna Laurel negotiations agreed to keep those discussions separate from ones about the future of the corridor.

“The city is in opposition to the toll road and presumably will continue to oppose it,” Mayor Lida Lenney said. “We foresee Laguna Laurel as a regional park,” and that would be harmed by the presence of the tollway.

But both the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies and the Irvine Co. maintain that the sale of Laguna Laurel to Laguna Beach and its preservation as a wilderness area will not affect plans for the tollway.

Although tollway officials have not seen the details of the Laguna Laurel settlement, spokeswoman Donna Stubbs said, “we don’t think it’s going to have any effect on us. . . . We’ll be moving forward, doing business as usual.”

“We are on the record in the past as having been supportive of all three transportation corridors, and that has not changed,” an Irvine Co. spokeswoman said.

Provision for the corridor right of way was written into the Laguna Laurel sales agreement, and the Irvine Co. remains committed to an earlier agreement to pay $30.2 million in transportation improvements associated with the tollway, a spokeswoman said. The settlement also includes a provision that any reduction in that amount as a result of the company’s decision not to proceed with the housing development is to be deducted from Laguna Beach’s final payment to the company.

But the future of the tollway is still in dispute.

A revised environmental impact report for the project that was released earlier this month includes a new plan for a bridge that would span the canyon, reducing damage to the environment. The revised report was to be a topic of discussion today at the regular meeting of the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies.

So far, grading for the road has been confined to the Aliso Viejo area, and no work has been done in Laguna Canyon. The corridor is already two years behind schedule, largely because the original plan was written for a freeway rather than a tollway. Further construction is contingent on approval of the environmental impact report.

Stubbs said she does not think that the scrapping of the Laguna Laurel development will necessitate the filing of a new environmental impact report. “We used existing (traffic flow) figures that were required at the time” the study was initially written, she said. The new agreement “won’t jeopardize this EIR as far as I can see. The plan was contingent on congestion that we have now.”

But opponents of the project are gearing up efforts to block it.

The city of Laguna Beach has hired a consultant to aid its effort to show that the tollway would contribute to smog and be otherwise environmentally disruptive.

Lenney is so opposed to the project that she wrote a letter to the tollway authority protesting that the signs along the route that describe it as a “freeway” are “false advertising.”