As a family business, Sport Chalet seemed to grow without plan . . .

A great American success story turned 30 last week in La Canada Flintridge.

It’s the story of a German immigrant couple of the late 1950s who settled in a rural suburb beside the mountains. They went into business, renting a line of merchandise that was still more appreciated back home than in L.A. They stuck with it doggedly as Americans acquired a taste and the taste became a passion.

It’s the story of a business that plugged along modestly at first, then became successful, then too successful, some thought. It leapfrogged across Southern California, establishing eight satellite stores. Yet it always kept its base right where Norbert and Irene Olberz had shrewdly opened their ski shop, at the foot of Angeles Crest Highway, the point where Angelenos converge on their way to the snow.

As a family business, Sport Chalet seemed to grow without plan, adding new lines of merchandise, budding into a compound of unimaginative brown stucco buildings that came to dominate their part of Foothill Boulevard. Norbert turned his money back into the community in a simple but effective way. He started buying property near his store. In 20 years, he acquired 28 parcels, most of them houses. His holdings now total almost 12 acres.

Today, as head of a sophisticated corporation, Norbert has drawn up a plan to transform the uncomely intersection into a trendy shopping center that he hopes to call La Canada Village.

Some residents of the executive-class bedroom community that La Canada Flintridge has become don’t welcome the idea, preferring uncomely and quiet to stylish and frenetic. The airing of their discontent will come soon, when the plan goes to the Planning Commission, possibly in May.

But Thursday evening, the town’s elite put the controversy out of mind and simply celebrated the irresistible Norbert and Irene story.

A party sponsored by the La Canada Chamber of Commerce was held where that story began, in the Sport Chalet ski shop. The setting was perfect in its awkward simplicity. Guests signed in at the cash register counter, just inside the one public entrance. Behind the counter, the shop unfolded as a series of chambers, one for apparel, one for boots, one for skis and so on.

The celebrants flowed easily toward the rear chamber--the rental shop--where a no-host bar was in swing. Along the way, they received the essentials of the story as told by Sport Chalet’s publicity department in an exhibit of photo enlargements on easels, with pithy captions.

“The storefront of Sport Chalet in 1964,” said one, under a picture of the store.

“In 1959, standing in my lederhosen, next to the newly acquired cash register,” said another under the image of a slender, young and smiling man in his lederhosen, at the cash register.

That same face, only a few years later, looked up from a portable typewriter. “In the early days, we worked many long and hard hours as sales clerks and accountants,” the caption said.

Others showed a young Irene, “Norbert’s favorite saleswoman,” and the couple at home in 1989.

The party started shortly after the business day was done. Soon about 200 people filled all the rooms. Among them were the community’s bankers, realtors, auto salesmen and, of course, the political set. A councilman ousted in last year’s election shared the space amicably with a victor.

The mood was effervescent. Spread out as they were, most guests chatted right through the formal remarks, which were tastefully brief. Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale) and Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) delivered words of praise and the obligatory proclamations.

Norbert and Irene, both handsome and trim, accepted self-consciously. He wore a blue blazer, slacks and old running shoes. She wore a brown business dress.

Then they cut a three-foot-long cake topped with kiwi fruit and strawberries. A team of caterers put aside their trays of quiche and endive tidbits and carried cake squares to everyone.

Later, Sam Allen, the company’s young chief executive officer, took up a position beside a large architect’s rendering of La Canada Village and answered dozens of questions.

Allen stated his employer’s case with unapologetic pride, and he wasn’t ashamed to throw in a little quiet desperation.

In the four years he’s been at Sport Chalet, Allen said, its business has doubled while its executive offices remain squeezed into the same corner of the loft in the sporting goods shop across the street.

“We’re just out of space, like rats in an alley,” he said. “I’m not sure we are going to last.”

It was a forgivable exaggeration. The office across the street does look cramped and weary. Yet it is equipped with up-to-the-minute tools, even a paper shredder.

And Norbert Olberz still presides there every day with the same equanimity he showed 30 years ago standing in his lederhosen over his first cash register.