Pomona Firm to Remodel Cabrillo Bathhouse

After more than two months of debate and delays, the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners has selected a Pomona-based partnership to convert San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach bathhouse into a restaurant and retail complex.

The board reached its 3-0 decision Monday, with Commissioner Mary Nichols switching her vote to reverse a previous stalemate.

The Pomona partnership, which calls itself Hurricane Gulch Development Co. after the popular San Pedro windsurfing spot, now has the right to negotiate a 30-year lease with the city. It was selected over a joint bid from the San Pedro Bay Co. and the Santa Monica-based Janss Corp.

“We’re very pleased, obviously,” said Charles Pilcher, one of the four Hurricane Gulch partners, after the commissioners’ vote. “We’re very excited and very committed to this project.”

Gary Larson, the developer who heads the San Pedro Bay Co., left the meeting quietly after the vote. In an interview the next day, he said he wasn’t surprised by the decision. “You roll with the punches.”

At two previous meetings, Larson, a San Pedro resident who has restored two buildings in the community’s downtown, asserted that the Hurricane Gulch plan was not financially feasible and that the company could not do an adequate job of restoring the historic bathhouse on the budget it had projected.

Commissioners said they had reservations about both bids, which differed vastly in the amount of revenue they projected for the city, with Hurricane Gulch proposing to pay more than 10 times as much in rent as San Pedro Bay Co. over a 10-year period.

Under the Hurricane Gulch proposal, the city will receive 6% of the gross receipts generated by the project. The San Pedro Bay Co. plan called for vendors in the project to pay Larson’s company between 6% and 7% of their gross receipts, and for the city to receive 6% of that amount. A staff report to the commissioners said the difference amounted to $1.4 million, with Hurricane Gulch paying the city $2.8 million over 10 years and San Pedro Bay Co. paying $240,000.

When the previous commission vote was taken Sept. 18, Nichols--who had voiced the loudest concerns about preservation of the 70-year-old building--advocated rejecting both plans and starting the bidding process again. But with only three of five commission members present, her plan failed to garner a majority.

After Monday’s meeting, Nichols said she switched her vote because she had viewed other examples of Pilcher’s work and had checked several references he provided. She said she was convinced that Hurricane Gulch, which formed specifically for the bathhouse project, had “a genuine understanding . . . of how to deal with a historic building.”

The bathhouse, built in 1929, was home to the Cabrillo Marine Museum for decades, until the museum moved out in 1981. It has been vacant since then. Several years ago, city officials began looking for someone to renovate the 20,000-square-foot building and lease it from the city on a long-term basis.

Parks officials say that although the Hurricane Gulch bid has been approved, it may be more than two years before work begins. The approval gives the city authority to negotiate a contract with Hurricane Gulch, and the contract must then be approved by the commissioners, the City Council and the state Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction because the building is in the coastal zone.

Such delays have frustrated some community leaders, who have complained that in recent years the old bathhouse has been the target of vandalism and that the Recreation and Parks Department has allowed it to fall into disrepair.

But Julie Boxx, the official in charge of the bathhouse, said the building looks in worse shape than it is. She said a maintenance crew recently patched several holes vandals had punched in the building’s walls.