EDITORIAL:Museum goes back to the drawing board

Laguna Art Museum officials are wise to be rethinking a proposed move to the Village Entrance.

Museum officials say the museum needs a larger space. They also have long-term plans to relocate to the city’s designated Arts District on Laguna Canyon Road, where the museum could be the centerpiece of a thriving “arts row” that includes the Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters, Art-A-Fair, Sawdust Art Festival grounds, Laguna College of Art & Design and assorted smaller galleries and cultural institutions.

Although the existing museum on North Coast Highway seems spacious, there are drawbacks to the facility, including a stifling basement — which museum spokespeople euphemistically refer to as the “lower level” — and an upper level that is more of a hallway than a gallery.

The Laguna Art Museum has a lofty mission, which includes serving as a repository for California art, and a history that goes back to the beginnings of this art colony called Laguna Beach.

In an ambitious — some might say creative — idea, museum officials proposed piggy-backing a new museum onto the Village Entrance project, envisioned as the “gateway” to Laguna Beach at the terminus of Laguna Canyon Road.

That idea by itself might have passed muster. But the museum’s inspiration didn’t end there: in order to pay for the whole project — including a 650-space city parking structure — about 30 luxury town homes were proposed to be built on upper levels above the parking garage/museum structure.

No doubt many with the museum thought it was an offer the city would not, or could not, refuse. But that was not the case.

The idea, instead, drew loud jeers and catcalls, and not just from those who have spent the last 35 years fighting against any building over two stories in Laguna. Many museum supporters and members were aghast at the idea, and made known their feelings loud and clear.

The Village Entrance project itself has been the subject of years of planning and replanning, and the City Council has worked hard to “fast-track” the project — with approval of a final environmental impact report and the relocation of the city corporation yard inland to the Act V parking lot, which just broke ground.

The museum proposal came on the heels of this “fast-track” approach and approval, which could not have been worse timing.

So a rethinking is in order, and hopefully the highly creative minds at the museum will come up with the proverbial “win-win-win” — for the museum, the city and the art world.