Bankrupt Harbor Restaurant May Be Reopened as Nightclub

The Crown Point Restaurant--a $3-million-plus banquet house on two acres of land and surrounded on three sides by water and priceless views of lofty bluffs--closed 2 1/2 years ago, when its builders went bankrupt.

Since then, stray cats, pigeons and youthful bands of clandestine beer drinkers have found its broad porches, heavy beams and stairways--and mostly its remoteness in a far corner of Dana Point Harbor--very well suited to their ways of life.

Now, after several failed attempts, the plush dinner house may reopen, this time as the first nightclub in the county-owned harbor, according to a spokesman for the leaseholder.

A proposal was submitted this week to the county to sub-lease the property to Michael Zanetis of San Juan Capistrano for a nightclub that might be called Michael’s Supper Club, said Stephen Blanchard, real property agent in the county’s General Services Agency.

Blanchard said the proposal was submitted by Gary Morris of MH Investment Council of Los Angeles, which represents the Plumbers Trust Fund of the Plumbing, Heating and Piping Industry of Southern California. The union organization took over the building, a note for more than $1 million and the lease on the land when the original owners pulled out, Morris said.

Zanetis, a resident of Orange County for several years, declined to discuss his plans for the facility until the county has given its approval. But he said he and his family have had extensive experience in the restaurant and hotel business in southern Indiana.

Blanchard, however, said: “It’s my understanding there will be music, dancing and live entertainment--different from anything the harbor is used to.”

Like all land in the harbor area, the restaurant site, which has private docks capable of handling a dozen or more visiting yachts, is owned by the county. And in this case, because of its location and size, it is leased for $36,000 a year, plus a percentage of the gross income from whatever business is operated there.

The Crown Point Restaurant was built in 1983-84 by William and Jean Peters, owners of the Crown House Restaurant in Laguna Niguel. Crown Point, in the west end of Dana Point Harbor across the channel from the Orange County Marine Institute, closed in April of 1985, less than a year after it opened.

Poor business was attributed to such things as an interior design that, according to Ed Conway, president of the Dana Point Specific Plan Board of Review, “took very little advantage of the wonderful views on all sides. . . . The bartender could look out on the harbor while his customers could look at him.”

Location could have been another factor, Conway said. The restaurant is at the far west end of a long, skinny man-made island inside the harbor’s main breakwater, with no shops--only boat slips and channels--around. Two restaurants located at the east end of the island suffered similar isolation problems until the present Delaney’s took over, so far successfully.

A number of other restaurants and shops clustered in the heart of the harbor area generally have done well, Conway said.

But Jean Peters said the restaurant failed because “we were (financially) overextended, and construction took too long.”

She said the 13,000-square-foot building was supposed to have opened in October of 1983 but actually wasn’t completed until May of 1984.

“It cost a lot just to keep up payments on the ($36,000 annual) lease of the land from the county,” Peters said. “Building delays were expensive, and later we didn’t have the money to properly promote the place, so it finally came down to us making a choice (between the Crown Point or the already-successful Crown House in Laguna Niguel).”

For her and her husband, both of whom are well-known area restaurateurs, the choice was a painful one. “The Crown Point in the harbor was our dream,” she said, “but the Crown House was well established.”

Bob Hamilton, program planning manager for the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks Department, said the closure of the restaurant left the county, and thus taxpayers, receiving only the basic $36,000 rent instead of an additional estimated $44,000 in gross income percentage.

“My concern is that it’s a valuable piece of property on which the public is receiving minimum return,” he said.

The new proposal for Crown Point must first must be examined by the harbors department. Blanchard said that a preliminary examination of the proposal indicated no cash would change hands but that the union would receive a percentage of the profits from the operator. The county would, in turn, receive its percentage of profits, in addition to the monthly lease payment.

If the plan is favorably received, Blanchard said, it could be presented to the Board of Supervisors for final approval “in about six or eight weeks.”

If there are no hitches, Blanchard said Michael’s Supper Club could be open next spring.

So for the cats and the pigeons--and the paper-bag beer-drinkers--the party may well be winding down.