Del Mar Inn, Plaza: Will the Fun Return?

Del Mar was a quaint coastal community in the 1940s when Marge Durante took her first trip to the Hotel Del Mar with her husband, comedian Jimmy Durante.

The Durantes socialized with Harry James, Betty Grable, Mickey Rooney and other members of the Hollywood crowd, all regular visitors to the Hotel Del Mar and the nearby race track.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz threw parties in their beach-front house, just a short walk from the hotel.

Soon the trip to Del Mar and the Hotel Del Mar became an annual ritual for the Durantes, who eventually bought a house in the community.

“It was just a fun place,” recalled Marge Durante, who still keeps a part-time residence in the city. “We’d have card games at night, then we’d go to Tijuana on Sundays.”

After falling into disrepair, the old hotel was torn down in 1969, taking with it some of the celebrity aura that surrounded the beach-side community, located about a 30-minute drive north of downtown San Diego.

Today, a new hotel, the Inn at Del Mar, is rising on the site of the Hotel Del Mar. Across the street, the Del Mar Plaza, a tiered, Italian-style shopping center designed by Jon Jerde, is also under construction.

The projects, both with spectacular ocean views, are giving the little city a new look, a new downtown and a new identity. Both were the subjects of long, bitter political battles.

“The old-time celebrity Del Mar was a quiet community,” said Mayor Brooke Eisenberg, who did not support either project. “When Bing (Crosby) and Jimmy (Durante) came here, it was a real quiet for them. I don’t know if that is what is going to happen downtown.”

Jim Watkins, a longtime Del Mar resident and developer of the new Inn at Del Mar, hopes to re-create some of the spirit and atmosphere of the old Hotel Del Mar with the new inn. When it opens in late summer, it will include a re-creation of the old hotel’s stone fireplace and a similar “Old World architecture” style.

“I heard so many stories about Nat (King) Cole playing piano around the old fireplace,” Watkins said. “That old fireplace was the hub of the community.”

The new inn will include 123 rooms, a restaurant, small shops and a European-style health spa. Many of the rooms will be named after the celebrities who frequented the old Hotel Del Mar, including a small pub called the Durante Room. Room rates will range from $149 to $700 a night for the best suites.

The inn is located at the north end of Del Mar’s main drag, Camino del Mar. Its amphitheater, stores and trails, coupled with the Plaza across the street, will effectively extend the end of the town for another block.

“I think this project gives the town a heart,” said Ivan Gayler, who developed the $26-million Plaza, along with partner David Winkler.

Gayler and Winkler went through a tumultuous four-year political process to give Del Mar a new “town square,” along with 35 shops and several restaurants.

Replacing a traditional California shopping center--a strip of small retail stores, anchored by a market, fronted by a large parking lot--the multi-layered Plaza features stone-and-tile pathways, wood trellises, fountains and arches. The parking has been moved undergound.

Some Stores Open

A few of the 35 stores, including a sushi bar and Il Fornaio restaurant, are already open. The rest of the Plaza is expected to be open by June. When completed, the Plaza will include a small market, which residents demanded that Gayler and Winkler include.

“The butcher station is the only one in California with a white-water view,” Gayler joked, noting that it was always the partners’ intention to retain the market.

Asking rents for the Plaza range from $2.70 to $4.35 a square foot per month, according to statistics compiled by Grubb & Ellis, easily making it the most expensive center in the area.

Gayler, a native of Del Mar, and Winkler, an attorney whose resume includes stints working with consumer advocate Ralph Nader and the Sierra Club, bought the Plaza site in 1983. Hundreds of the city’s 6,000 residents attended design-review meetings for their plans. Every step of the way, every awning, every color, every dimension became a hotly debated topic.

Opponents most often expressed concern about traffic and ocean views and, particularly, the effect the new Plaza and embryonic plans for the hotel property would have on the city’s “village atmosphere.”

Growth-Control Measure

In 1985 a group of residents developed the Del Mar Initiative, one of the most extreme growth-control measures ever presented in the state. It called for a public vote on all large downtown projects.

The intiative did not specifically mention any projects, but at the time it only applied to two properties--the Plaza and the hotel.

In April, 1986, the City Council unanimously approved initial plans for Del Mar Plaza. A few days later, Del Mar voters approved the initiative and filled two available council seats with slow-growth supporters, removing the incumbent mayor and effectively wiping out the previous council’s approval of the project.

With the initiative guidelines in place, plans for a smaller Plaza went to the voters in February, 1987, after an often bitter campaign. It won approval by 41 votes.

Meanwhile, Watkins was developing plans for the 5.2-acre hotel property. Throughout the process, the debate revolved around the future of Del Mar’s village atmosphere and the concept of a pedestrian-oriented residential community.

Del Mar voters rejected Watkins’ first plan by 15 votes in September, 1987, despite Watkins’ offer to provide almost $2 million for a new library and other public facilities. A second, slightly scaled-down plan, was approved by 200 votes a few months later.

Impact on Community

Even now, with both projects about to open, the debate over their impact on this community continues as hot as ever. Some residents are talking of boycotting the projects.

“They’re turning a seaside village community with a limited population into a Laguna Beach, a tourist trap,” said longtime-resident Chuck Wein.

“These projects ensure that Del Mar will never be like Laguna Beach, with 10 miles of stores,” Watkins said. “These projects ensure there will always be a village, that there never will be a high-rise hotel in Del Mar.”

The Plaza owners emphasize their project will serve local residents, not tourists. They have refused to accept any of the traditional tourist-oriented small stores in the Plaza.

“We’ve rejected T-shirt shops and strict trinket shops,” Winkler said. “We simply won’t let them in here.”

‘Beautifully Done’

However, some see the town developing into a tourist-oriented, rather than resident-oriented, community.

“The Plaza is beautifully done,” said land-use attorney Dwight Worden, a resident and former Del Mar city attorney. “But then you go down and hang out at the new Gelato and you can see that the number of people walking around already seems to have gone way up.”

Supporters say the projects will return a touch of class to the “village.” The inn and Plaza, they say, will attract the type of people needed to spark the community--and local business.

“It’s beneficial to have these people walking through town,” said retired U.S. Navy Adm. Lew Hopkins, a former Del Mar mayor and a former president of the local chamber of commerce. “There is the potential to develop a clientele that will really contribute to the atmosphere of Del Mar.”