Dana Point Given Early Birthday Gift

It probably should be called a shower gift rather than a birthday present, because the birth hasn’t happened yet.

Orange County officials have put up nearly half a million dollars to begin rebuilding and beautifying the historic downtown plaza at Dana Point, even though the community will not be born as a city until Jan. 1.

Originally, before Dana Point, with Capistrano Beach, took the step toward cityhood, plaza improvements were not scheduled to begin until 1992. But Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Dana Point, asked that the project be moved up “as the county’s gift to the new city.”

Work is scheduled to start in about a week on the 200-foot-wide plaza from Coast Highway to La Plaza. The refurbishing includes widening the median strip from its current 4 feet to 40 feet and adding walks, benches and extensive landscaping, according to Rick Efker, senior civil engineer in the county’s Housing and Community Development Division. The project is expected to be completed in February with $488,000 in block-grant funding by Housing and Community Development.

The old plaza also may become the city’s Civic Center, at least temporarily, as officials work on plans to conduct council meetings in a new, two-story building nearing completion on one corner.

One of the concerns in the refurbishing of the narrow median strip has been the fate of a flagpole, which was made from the mast of a schooner that was wrecked on the Dana Point rocks in the 1960s.

The 60-foot pole stands on the median strip where the plaza joins Coast Highway. Two palms were planted nearby, and before long they had grown so tall and so close to the pole that a flag could not be flown.

“The plans are to relocate the palms . . . and leave the pole where it is,” said Bob Meyers, owner of a hardware store on the plaza and chairman of the Dana Point Plaza Merchants Assn.

He said efforts are being made to light the pole, which under flag etiquette would allow the flag to be flown 24 hours a day and eliminate the need to raise and lower it.

When the broad plaza was build in the early 1920s, it featured ornate street signs with names such as Street of the Golden Lantern, or Amber Lantern, or Violet Lantern, each with a lamp matching the appropriate color.

They were removed in the 1930s, partly because they attracted vandalism. But Meyers and other residents stored them away. Fifteen of them will be refurbished and placed in the new median strip, Efker said.

City Councilman-elect Mike Eggers said the county’s plan to revamp the plaza now is “a heck of a deal” because the plaza “is the heart of our old-town flavor.”

“It’s a very positive project that shows the county hasn’t abandoned us even though we are incorporating,” he added.

The park in the plaza will be maintained by the Capistrano Bay Park and Recreation District.