Residents of Quaint Seaside Enclave Fear Waves of Change

Mike Beanan would be insulted if you told him he lives in hip, well-to-do Laguna Beach. The 55-year-old craftsman who restores and remodels cottages insists his home is in South Laguna.

Big difference, he says.

“South Laguna is considered the old community, the old connection to nature,” says Beanan, 55, boasting of a hippie culture that still runs through his end of town. “Laguna Beach is Coney Island. You go downtown, and it’s just T-shirt shops, ice cream stores and pizza parlors.”

His assessment may be overly simplistic and even unkind for an elegant town famous for its annual Festival of Arts, Pageant of the Masters, eclectic mix of stores and restaurants, and picturesque beaches.

But that’s how many of the roughly 4,000 residents of South Laguna believe their community stacks up against their more populous and prosperous neighbors to the north. It’s been nearly two decades since annexation blended the two Lagunas into one town. But aside from city documents, a united Laguna has never truly formed.

Now a property-buying spree in South Laguna by the owners of the Montage Resort & Spa and their partners has residents and business people on edge. They worry that South Laguna’s funky, small-town atmosphere will evaporate after developers are done.

Some fear an influx of tourist shops; others see a future in which the modest homes of writers, carpenters, teachers, retirees and surfers will be scrapped for multimillion-dollar mansions.

Until annexed by Laguna Beach in 1987, South Laguna -- about 1,400 acres along three miles of coastline -- was a forgotten county parcel where residents were unhampered by strict city regulations on what they built and how they lived.

From Nyes Place in the north to just before Crown Valley Parkway, they built a hodgepodge of granny flats, converted garages to apartments and added second stories and decks to get ocean views. The result was a whimsical collection of architectural styles. If neighbors complained, they had to travel to Santa Ana, the county seat.

Until the city recently put up street signs, residents nailed hand-carved signs to trees letting people know that they were at Summit Way, Cypress Lane or Meadow Lane. That was if there were any signs at all.

There still are few sidewalks. Or streetlights.

Then there’s the landscaping. Towering eucalyptus with fire-red blooms on Eagle Rock Way create a lush canopy over the street. Torrey pines introduced in the 1930s by noted landscape architect Fred Lang “perpetuate some things we have in South Laguna that they don’t have in Laguna Beach, like the great horned owls with a 9-foot wingspan,” said Eric Jessen, a longtime resident of Laguna Beach who bought a home in South Laguna a dozen years ago.

The residential community does have one unofficial rule: Don’t park in front of someone else’s home. “You could mess with somebody’s wife and not get in as much trouble as if you took a parking space,” said Gale “Morrie” Granger, a longtime resident.

But now, South Laguna residents fear their laid-back community may soon resemble that of their northern neighbors, with a variety of tourist-friendly businesses, including frozen yogurt stores, swank shops and tony restaurants with valet parking.

“We don’t want the kind of businesses that are on Forest Avenue” in downtown Laguna Beach, said former Mayor Ann Christoph, a landscape architect and a past president of the South Laguna Civic Assn.

The fears began when a group that included the Montage bought the Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course and a 240-acre parcel known as Driftwood Estates, both for undisclosed sums earlier this year.

The owners of the Montage have already made a large footprint in the South Laguna landscape on the site of the old Treasure Island Mobile Home Park. Opened last year, the $200-million, 262-room seaside resort has been, by most accounts, less intrusive and a better neighbor than skeptical residents had imagined, except for a lingering parking problem.

Still, people in South Laguna wonder what the Montage has in store for the two large chunks of real estate it has bought. A spokeswoman for the resort said plans are still being developed.

But in the information vacuum, some South Laguna residents fear the worst.

“Montage is invading South Laguna, and they’re doing it with money,” said Beanan, an ex-Navy SEAL suspicious of government, politicians and corporations. “We saw this charming little cove and neat community. They saw easy pickings.”

Granger and his wife, Barbara, said the town’s character is almost certain to change if more shops and restaurants are added to attract affluent tourists.

A Food Network show that featured a favorite locals’ haunt, the Coyote Grill, is a case in point, Barbara Granger said. “Now they have valet parking,” which is common in Laguna Beach but a rarity in South Laguna.

The Grangers -- he is a retired professor of immunology and she is a retired research assistant at UC Irvine -- have thrown three large parties annually for more than 20 years. One is called “Welcome Back Locals, Goodbye Tourists” and celebrates the end of summer and return to a simpler life for South Laguna.

They worry about the recent Montage purchases and envision what lies ahead.

“The prices of these little houses will go up so high the locals will sell,” Morrie Granger said. “They’ll be enticed to move out, and the next group of people that move in will not be the same. Our little enclave here will be changed.”