Oceanside May Go Gung-Ho for Culture : Image: City near Camp Pendleton wants to be known as a North County arts center rather than an outpost for honky-tonks.

Oceanside has embarked on a quest to change its image from Marine fun zone to cultural capital of North County.

The city’s political, business and social leaders have looked on with envy while smaller cities have sailed beyond San Diego’s long shadow to form their own identities and cultural sophistication.

Escondido is building a $55-million Center for the Arts, a stucco-and-glass ensemble of buildings, and Poway, where the motto is “A City in the Country,” is nearing completion of a $7.6-million, 800-seat Poway Center for the Performing Arts.

“I’m embarrassed this town doesn’t put its foot forward and show itself off the way it could,” said Randy Mitchell, a retired Marine Corps officer, a public relations man, and co-chairman of the Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation. “We’ve finally said to ourselves, ‘By God, it’s time we did in this community what we should have been doing for years.’ ”

So the year-old, 40-member foundation is poised to vote Jan. 27 to authorize a $20,000 to $30,000 consultant’s survey to find out whether culture can flourish in Oceanside, what type of artistic activities people want, whether there’s enough support for a cultural arts facility and how much it would cost.

“We have the potential of being the cultural hub in North County,” said Colleen Richardson, who arrived in Oceanside in 1961 as a freshly minted school teacher and found the primary form of live entertainment was the high school drama and band.

Oceanside’s pursuit of the arts began six years ago, when community activists decided to change the city’s stereotype as “a tough Marine town,” as Richardson put it.

One of the first steps was to change the image of the very citizen’s group that was formed to change the city’s image. The Image Improvement Task Force was deftly renamed Oceanside Tomorrow, said Richardson.

In more recent years, Oceanside has won new admiration for its stylish beachfront development, a rebuilt pier and a nearly finished Spanish-style Civic Center on Hill Street downtown.

It was Mayor Larry Bagley who decided the time had come for Oceanside to explore the construction of a 2,000-seat theater for the performing arts and a permanent building for exhibits, and he spurred creation of the arts foundation.

He and other arts enthusiasts believe Oceanside’s growth is bringing more residents with interest in the arts and the income to support it. From a largely transitory population in the 1960s, when Bagley said “half the people in Oceanside were in and out because of the Marine Corps,” the city is looking toward a maximum stable population of 220,000.

Richardson said, “We have a lot of people who moved in from larger metropolitan areas who are used to amenities.” She said younger professionals who grew up in Oceanside and stayed “are making a difference, too” by seeking new community activities.

As bullish as Mitchell is toward a new performing arts and cultural arts center, he can’t predict what the study will conclude about the interest.

He remembers with some discomfort how Oceanside voters in the 1960s defeated a proposed auditorium at MiraCosta College and the dismal results of a North County Concert Assn. study 10 years ago into whether the public would support another auditorium.

“The study came back and said ‘you can’t raise enough money in the community to build an auditorium,’ therefore we dropped it,” Mitchell said .

Still, he is encouraged by the proposal of Spectator Marketing Corp. of La Jolla to build an amphitheater on Oceanside Boulevard, a project that will be introduced to city business people next week.

“I believe the amphitheater is absolutely fantastic. It would give us the opportunity to enjoy the finest opera, Broadway plays and soloists,” said Mitchell.

He believes there would still be a need for an indoor facility for performing arts and exhibits, saying “a town needs something like this to be well-rounded. We’re sort of lacking culture in Oceanside. In fact, we’re lacking culture in North County.”

But even Mayor Bagley has no illusions about the public’s willingness to pay for a cultural arts facility. “I think we’re going to have to look for most of the funding to come from private contributions,” he said.

Although the foundation is trying to foster a positive outlook, there is some skepticism.

Elizabeth Kaderli, who was a PBS program producer in Houston until she moved to Oceanside three years ago, said she likes her fellow foundation members and doesn’t mean to sound critical, but pursuing cultural goals may be a lost cause.

“It seems to me like a small town without the support base for bringing in artists,” she said. “I’m not sure about the percentage of people who’d attend these kinds of events.”

She said much of Oceanside is composed of modest-income working families who are “not necessarily looking for entertainment, except for movies and TV.”