Montage Resort Spa

Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson on Monday rejected a controversial proposal by the Montage Resort & Spa, effectively killing the luxury hotel's hopes of building a championship golf course in a protected wilderness park. "I've come to a very strong conclusion," Wilson said in a statement released late Monday afternoon. "The concept ... is one I simply cannot personally support."

Developers of the oceanfront Montage Resort announced plans Monday to build a sister property -- a 90-room, Craftsman-style lodge with a redesigned nine-hole golf course and condominiums nestled in a South Laguna canyon. The preliminary plan also calls for new trails between the beach and a county wilderness park and designates about 250 acres as open space, said John Mansour, the Athens Group vice president of development.

The sun is melting away and a handful of us are sitting cross-legged and gazing into the ocean. We've been waiting all harried day for this: The sunset yoga ritual at the Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach. Of all the fitness classes, massages and spa treatments I have taken to relax my mind and muscles, this is my favorite. The reason? The location. The Montage floats five stories above the ocean.

Two guests at the Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach were killed by gunfire Sunday during a confrontation with police at the door of their hotel room. The incident occurred shortly before 8 a.m. as police investigated reports of a distraught woman with a gun on the south side of the posh resort. The woman was in one of the hotel's bungalows, where she was arguing with a man believed to be her husband, police said.

On their final night alive, Kevin and Joni Park checked into a bluff-top bungalow at one of the West Coast's toniest resorts packing a gun and a bag of ammunition. The Mission Viejo couple used a fake name, police said, and paid for their $2,200-a-night lodgings in cash. They brought piles of money and boxes of mysterious documents.

Kevin and Joni Park's erratic behavior in the hours before their deaths at a posh Laguna Beach resort may have been driven by the wife's zeal to obtain the couple's share of a family inheritance and the fear that someone would kill them to take it away, two officials told The Times on Tuesday.

With officers already summoned to their bungalow, Kevin Park called 911 moments before he and his wife were shot and killed in a bizarre confrontation with police at a Laguna Beach resort, telling a dispatcher that the couple did not present a threat, according to the police log. Three minutes after that call was placed Sunday morning from a hotel phone, the dispatcher received the first report of gunfire at the Montage Resort & Spa, the log shows. "It's my wife.

Montage Resort & Spa officials said Tuesday that they were back to square one in their quest to build a championship-scale golf course in Laguna Beach after an Orange County supervisor rejected their plan to encroach on a protected wilderness park. "After getting this news and figuring out where we stand, we're starting all over," said Marguarite Clark, spokeswoman for the luxury hotel in South Laguna. "Eighteen holes is not imperative to us," she said.

In the search for a luxury getaway, the coastal strip of south Orange County makes for easy hunting. The Ritz-Carlton and the St. Regis resorts are practically within a hot tub splash of each other in Dana Point. Most recently, the Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach joined the group with a Craftsman-style ocean-side spread that exudes California-casual elegance. But the problem with luxury, even casual luxury, is that it comes with a luxury price tag.

Laguna Beach's oceanfront Montage resort has scrapped its controversial plan to build an 18-hole golf course, once considered an important ingredient for the five-star hotel. The course, which would have encroached on a county wilderness park, was opposed by many residents, environmental groups and, ultimately, county officials. Now, the Montage Resort & Spa and its partners are preparing to unveil another proposal for the 310 acres they own in the foothills above Aliso Beach.