Del Mar OKs Plan to Develop Beachfront Site

The City Council approved Monday a plan of two of its members to seek private funds to develop a valuable city-owned beach property.

The vote was 4-0.

The property, once a generating plant, is prime beachfront near the foot of 15th Street. It was purchased by the city two years ago to preclude the building of a restaurant on the site.

Council members Ronnie Delaney and Scott Barnett, who proposed the speedup of development for the Powerhouse Park property, asked the council to give them the authority to form a community coalition to seek financing for the project.

Barnett said that a landscaping plan chosen in a design competition probably is too expensive for the city, even with private funding help.

“It’s a gold-plated plan,” Barnett said. “If we wait to do this with city funds, I’ll be lucky to be able to use it before I’m a grandfather.”

The landscaping plan proposed by Stone Fischer & Associates carries a price tag of about $1 million and is not scheduled to be included in the city’s capital improvements budget until 1989 or later.

The city is awaiting the results of an engineering study on the old power plant building and its towering smokestack to determine if they are structurally sound before it explores proposals to use the building as a community center or for some other purpose.

“It would be a cruel joke if, after committing the city to pay $11,000 a month for the property, we would find that the building was worthless,” Barnett said.

He pointed out that, under the lease purchase agreement, the property would revert to the former owners if the city did not keep up the payments.

“If there were a storm and the (Del Mar) race track were washed out, we would need our money for more pressing problems than the park,” Barnett pointed out. “We could lose everything.”

The powerhouse was built on the beachfront before the turn of the century to generate power for a Del Mar resort hotel and for much of the town as well. It ceased to be useful when a public power company took over the task.

The building served as a nightclub and as an experimental laboratory for desalination of sea water after it was abandoned. Most recently, a development firm bought the property and proposed construction of a restaurant, but Del Mar residents voted instead to acquire the tract for a park.

“I would like to see this valuable asset used,” Delaney said Monday. “We are paying an awfully lot of money for it to let it sit there empty.”

She and Barnett have discussed organization of a fund-raising group that would seek private donations to accomplish the renovation.

Barnett also proposed that the group look into a citywide bond issue or assessment district that would impose citywide levies to improve the Powerhouse Park property and to resolve city beach erosion and drainage problems.

Barnett also said that grants and shared public-private use of the property should be explored as a means to finance the park construction.

The City Council recently turned down a proposal by Del Mar businessman Sam Borgese to renovate the building and use it for a private exercise club. He also offered to conduct some community activities there in return for a long-term lease.