Hospitality on Forest Avenue offers lesson for Laguna — but will city officials pay heed?

Every big Laguna Beach celebration takes place on Forest Avenue — Hospitality Night, the Patriots’ Day Parade, Fête de la Musique — and almost all of them, thankfully, shut down the street.

Why? Because it’s better that way. People like to meander and socialize. They get off their phones and talk face to face, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend.

A village — a real village — nurtures the vitality of a downtown core because it’s the lifeblood of its residents.

As a result, a village doesn’t allow cars to run over people in its downtown pedestrian walkways. That doesn’t happen because the design makes it physically impossible.

Believe it or not, cars and people don’t mix. That’s hard to believe in Laguna but it’s true.

Which is why during the last Hospitality Night, as I stood in a busy restaurant and looked out over a closed Forest Avenue filled with happy people, I wondered again why Laguna is not a village.

The city elders say it’s a village, but it’s not.

It’s a pass-through. Every road is a thoroughfare. Every street optimized for traffic. Every nook and cranny designated for valet parking.

Coast Highway is a freeway. Broadway an arterial. Forest an exhaust factory, as cars idle like spitting smokestacks. Forest actually resembles a New Orleans shotgun house with parking stalls slotted like rooms.

But not on Hospitality Night. Instead, Forest was filled with music, children and fake snow. There were people in costumes trying to outdo each other. Dogs were in tow, unfortunately, wondering why in the heck their owners brought them.

People couldn’t help themselves because, fundamentally, Lagunans like to dress up and throw a party. They like to socialize and feel connected, which is why Forest shuts down.

It’s the village clarion call. It’s only when Forest shuts down that Laguna actually becomes a village.

It’s as if two or three times a year is enough. Our village DNA is sustained by a couple of brief, feel-good closures.

We come, we mingle, we jingle, we go home.

God forbid we ever go downtown again.

But what would happen if we did? What would happen if we closed Forest for good?

From Coast Highway to Glenneyre Street — some 385 feet — we have the opportunity to become a village full-time. Yes, it eliminates a handful of parking spaces. Yes, it would require some short-term angst while we wring our hands.

But we would actually become a village. Tourists would love us even more. We’d get written up in Main Street magazine for the most brilliant downtown facelift ever.

Wait, there’s more (and this is perhaps the best part): We could hire consultants who actually get to do something! Woo-woo.

So here’s the rub. We’re nowhere near the closure of Forest. There are parking issues. There are downtown restrictions. There probably are live-work ramifications that would freak everyone out.

And in my head I hear an officious man yelling at me: “There are rules, David. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”

But consultants are studying Forest as we speak. MIG has been working for more than a year on some ideas as part of the Downtown Specific Plan update. The company will present more paperwork at the Dec. 14 Planning Commission meeting. The real juicy recommendations, however, won’t happen until after the holidays.

I am not particularly optimistic — not about MIG’s ideas but about the city’s expected response. And by city I mean the City Council, the politicos, the environmentalists, the litigants and every other monkey wrench who refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth.

Laguna is not a village.

It’s not an art colony.

It’s not a gay haven.

Instead, it’s a glittering Christmas ornament that’s lost its glitter.

The sparkle is lost somewhere on Forest Avenue, the only street that can save us.

---

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at [email protected].