Our Mission

Our mission is to preserve and protect the historic fabric and aesthetics of Laguna Beach. We comment on specific projects involving historic resources at City Council and board and commission meetings to help ensure that proposed alterations to historic resources meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and to discourage demolition of historic properties.

We also work to ensure that the City’s policies and processes conform with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Historic resources and aesthetics are both considered part of the environment under CEQA, and proposed projects that may negatively impact them require environmental review. When the City Council voted recently to amend its historic preservation ordinance and general plan to eliminate protections for hundreds of identified historic resources without disclosing or mitigating the impacts, it violated CEQA. The Coalition is pursuing a legal challenge to that decision.

The Coalition wants to continue working to improve the City’s historic preservation ordinance to ensure a simpler, clearer process for property owners who wish to alter historic resources.