Controversial artist work/live project inches forward in Laguna Beach after Planning Commission keeps city permit alive

A Laguna Beach artist work/live project embroiled in legal battles for years took a step closer to fruition at a Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night.

The commission unanimously determined that the municipal code allows a city permit to go into effect on the date a coastal development permit is approved — which in artist-developer Louis Longi’s case, was three years after his city permit was issued in 2014.

The code allows two years after a city permit’s effective date to begin construction on a project. The Planning Commission can approve a two-year extension and then a one-year extension after that, for a total of five years before the permit runs out.

The five-year period on Longi’s permit ended Monday. His lawyer Jeffrey Harlan argued — and the Planning Commission ultimately agreed — that the permit should have been effective once the California Coastal Commission approved a coastal development permit on Aug. 9, 2017. A developer can’t begin the building process without all permits in hand, so the city and coastal development permits should have the same effective date, Harlan said.

If that were the case for Longi, the city permit would still be within its initial two-year period.

Longi first received the City Council’s approval for a work/live space on Laguna Canyon Road almost exactly five years ago. The project would include two two-story buildings with 28 housing units, six art studios and gallery space.

The group Friends of the Canyon appealed the council’s decision to the Coastal Commission, where the case was tied up for the next several years with two Coastal Commission hearings and multiple lawsuits before the commission approved Longi’s coastal development permit.

“It’s disingenuous for the project opponents to argue that the permits have expired, because the only reason for delay of this project is the project opponents’ appeals and subsequent litigation,” Harlan said. “If anything, this only highlights the inequity that results when a project opponent tries to run out the clock on a permit.”

Commissioner Ken Sadler agreed that the Planning Commission could set a bad precedent if it decided the effective dates of the city permit and coastal development permit did not align.

“There really isn’t a project until that coastal development permit is issued, and it just doesn’t seem fair, the way that certain things get opposed and litigated these days …, that it could be possible that somebody could litigate something beyond the five-year maximum of the initial Planning Commission or Coastal Commission approval,” Sadler said. “And then what happens, it just dies because somebody litigates it for over five years? That doesn’t seem right.”

Other commissioners said they understood the project’s controversial history but that they were tasked with sticking to a code interpretation.

“This is a code that we need to just apply and that’s it,” Chairman Roger McErlane said.

The Planning Commission’s decision is final unless appealed to the City Council within 14 days.

Friends of the Canyon lawyer Julie Hamilton pinned the delays of the past five years on Longi and his legal team, saying they failed to follow proper procedures on time.

“There’s a reason for time limits. They’re not some random thought that we throw into municipal codes to make it hard on the applicant,” Hamilton said. “They are a thought that we throw into municipal codes to make it so that projects aren’t processed forever.”

Hamilton argued that the time limit for a city permit is necessary because changes can occur over five years that affect the essence of a project. She and others said Longi’s project has changed substantially enough in the past five years — partly because of conditions in the Coastal Commission’s decision — that the original city permit should not apply.

Laguna Beach Planning Manager Scott Drapkin said in an interview after the meeting Wednesday that he has reviewed the Coastal Commission’s decision and determined that the changes were not substantial enough to warrant a rehearing of the project at the City Council.

Before the item went to the floor Wednesday, Hamilton requested that Commissioner Jorg Dubin recuse himself from the discussion since he has spoken in support of Longi’s project in the past.

Dubin, who began his first term on the Planning Commission this year, read a statement outlining his connection to Longi, whom he called a longtime friend. He concluded that he would not recuse himself and would vote on the code interpretation “as a fair and impartial member of the commission.”