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Case Studies
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Results
Our tireless efforts to cultivate this groundswell of community support significantly contributed to project approvals by the City of Laguna Beach Planning Commission and City Council and ultimately, California Coastal Commission approval in June 2000. The five-star Montage Resort and Spa opened to national acclaim in February 2003.
Suzuki vs. Consumer Reports
Montage Resort & Spa
Break Away Church
Museum Averts Protest
Bolsa Chica Plan

 

Overcoming Fierce Community Opposition to Luxury Resort

Challenge
For more than five years, Gladstone International managed public relations for the developer of a planned resort in Laguna Beach, CA, one of the fiercest slow growth communities in the nation. The Athens Group proposed to convert a 50-year-old mobile home park with a spectacular oceanfront view into a resort hotel, luxury residential community and open space. Entrenched environmental and opposition groups vigorously fought the plan from the beginning.

Solution
We not only shaped formal research, but also conducted community ascertainments to determine the community values that would generate support. We discovered that the community prized beach access and could support the redevelopment of a gated mobile home park if the plan offered public access to the beach and the creation of a bluff-top public park.

Over the course of the lengthy entitlement process, we met with Laguna Beach residents one-on-one and in groups, created a speakers’ bureau, organized community workshops and briefing sessions, produced educational materials and served as media spokesperson.