DANA POINT : General Plan for Urban Strategy OKd

Thirty months after Dana Point’s incorporation, the City Council early Tuesday put the final touches on its first General Plan, a document considered to be the blueprint of the city’s future.

During a special eight-hour meeting that lasted until nearly 2 a.m., the council hammered out a series of line-by-line changes to the nine-part, state-mandated document that outlines the city’s strategy in regulating matters such as land use, economic development, design, housing, open space and growth management.

After allowing a week for public review, the General Plan will go back to the council Tuesday for final consideration.

The 5-inch-thick General Plan is perhaps the single most important document, certainly the most far-reaching, a city ever develops, said Ed Knight, community development director.

“There will be constant reference to this document for the next 30 years,” Knight said. “Any time you make a planning decision, you must ask yourself, ‘Does this or does this not conform to the General Plan?’ ”

Mayor Mike Eggers called the General Plan a “broad-brush” approach to city planning that will be followed later this summer by a city zoning code and specific plans for neighborhoods.

“It’s the umbrella,” Eggers said. “Underneath it you have specific plans and zoning. I like to relate the approval of a General Plan to building a stadium, and now we still have to put the players in it.”