A project’s crude history in Avila Beach

A pelican takes flight in Avila Beach, which was torn down and rebuilt. It’s now less dive bar and more wine and cheese.   (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Pedestrians make their way along Front Street in Avila Beach. The town has had a charmed Central Coast existence, with one disastrous exception: the massive oil spill.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Rick Cohen, executive director of the Avila Beach Community Foundation, says fiercely protective residents will be keeping a close watch on the development.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Mike Cullen walks his basset hound, Buddy Blue VI, on Front Street. Cullen lived in Avila Beach for 35 years before moving to Oahu. “We kind of miss the old town,” he said. “The whole thing just got erased.”  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Much of Avila Beach, including its entire business district, had to be torn down and reconstructed, its iconoclastic, working-class character, many believe, lost in a thicket of bulldozers, lawyers and regulators.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Fred Sawaske, visiting from Fresno, enjoys a cup of java at Joe Momma’s Coffee on Front Street. Among some of the salty old guard in Avila Beach, word of the resort proposal has been sobering -- as if the bitterness associated with “the trauma,” as one official called it, was always just a shovelful away, like the crude oil that once permeated the dirt.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)