Nostalgic or Not, Pier May Get Face Lift

Some couples who honeymooned in Pacific Beach at the Crystal Pier Motel, with its stucco walls and blue tile roof, return year after year to their special cottage on the pier, motel manager Jim Bostian said.

“They demand the same room and won’t settle for anything less. They consider it their cottage,” he said. “Some have been coming back for 30 to 40 years.”

The aging archway and pier building at the foot of Garnet Avenue are historic relics to these honeymooners, as well as to Pacific Beach residents and tourists.

But, if the California Coastal Commission goes along, a $2.4-million project that incorporates a 24-cottage hotel, retail shops and underground parking may replace the existing structure.

On July 3, the San Diego City Council voted to allow the pier motel’s owner to demolish the popular landmark, despite the building’s designation by the San Diego Historical Site Review Board as a historic site.

Pending approval from the Coastal Commission and review by a few other state and local agencies, the owner can begin building the hotel and cottages.

Willis M. Allen Jr., whose family owns the aging building that frames the pier’s entrance and the 19 rustic cottages on the pier, said the structure is an eyesore.

“The place needs a face lift,” Allen said. The pier building and its familiar archway touting “Crystal Pier Motel, Sleep Over the Ocean,” considered by many to be a community symbol, were built in 1926 and purchased by Allen’s family in 1961.

Allen said he intends to maintain the flavor of the architectural landmark by replicating the existing structure and the popular archway and cupolas, although changes have been planned, such as a suspended walkway under the arch.

Vonn-Marie May, a landscape planner and a member of the site board, said Allen’s project is an insult to the site’s historic and community importance. She said the archway structure has been used generation after generation as a logo for Pacific Beach.

“The Crystal Pier building is one of the last and most significant examples of mission revival architecture,” she said, referring to the building’s design, native to Southern California. “For a boom town like San Diego it’s hard for people to see that we should keep things scaled down. We don’t want another Manhattan here.”

Pacific Beach business people say redeveloping Crystal Pier could be the key to revitalizing the business district that ends at the pier, which is heavily populated with panhandlers, drunks and drug dealers, according to Allen.

“This will be a step in the right direction in trying to get all the riffraff out of here. We’re just trying to clean up the neighborhood,” Bostian said, as businesses in the area are trying to attract more vacationing families.

He said the only complaints he had heard about the project were from a handful of tenants in a condominium building just south of the pier, who said the new building will block their ocean view. But, Bostian said the condominium’s developers knew about the possible project before they broke ground more than 15 years ago.

But May argues that simply renovating the building would upgrade the neighborhood, while saving the historic building. “The Allens never once considered saving the building,” she said.

Allen said the deteriorating landmark needs to be rebuilt. There are holes in the walls and ceilings, water damage to floors, and the foundation is unstable, he said.

Pacific Beach Town Council President Barbara Hughes said she was surprised at the lack of public interest in Crystal Pier. Both sides, those who want to save it and those who want to redevelop, have only received a handful of letters voicing support. When the town council met to discuss and eventually approve the project, only a few Pacific Beach residents bothered to show up, she said.

Earlier this year, the Historical Site Review board gave the Crystal Pier building its highest protection, stressing renovation over demolition, May said.

Allen appealed the decision to the council, saying the structure wasn’t “horrendously significant.” The City Council voted to lift the historical designation and instead instructed the Allens to simply establish a photographic record of the pier building.

May said the Crystal Pier building is just one example of about five high-profile buildings that the historical site review board has tried to preserve, but been overridden by the City Council.

She listed the Aztec Brewery in Barrio Logan and Belmont Park in Mission Beach as other recent examples of commercial development replacing historical landmarks. Both structures, built around the same time as the Crystal Pier, were stripped of protection by the council and handed over to developers, May said.

“It seems as if the City Council is willing to sacrifice for any reason whatsoever our cultural landmarks,” said David Swarens, president of Save Our Heritage Organisation. “It appears their agenda is hostile to preservation.”

“It’s not that the council doesn’t seem to heed to groups like ours that are advocates for our heritage, but they also seem to ignore the findings of their own board designed to advise them on matters relating to conservation of our cultural landmarks,” Swarens said.

“For the past three years, the City Council has never accepted a recommendation of the site board when there has been an appeal,” Swarens said.

Ron Buckley, the city’s senior planner and secretary to the historic site board, said each project had unique circumstances associated with it and council members felt they were doing the best thing considering the circumstances.

Should the aging Crystal Pier building come down and a modern hotel built, Allen said the height of the new building will match that of the old and the appearance will replicate the original building. But May contends that the new building will be nearly four times larger than the existing structure.

“In an area like Pacific Beach that is changing so rapidly and radically, the Crystal Pier building and archway help retain the essence of the community and its roots,” said Judy Swink, a board member of Citizens Coordinate for Century III, a volunteer group concerned with land-use planning.

Just three months after Crystal Pier opened in 1926, its developer found that its pilings were infested with marine borers, a type of water termite. Within three years, the pier was closed and not reopened until the day after its 10th birthday, when 10 motel cottages were added.

The blue-shuttered cottages that sit on the pier, which once--according to Crystal Pier lore--housed the likes of Bing Crosby and Pat O’Brien, are now ridden with leaking pipes and chipped paint.

Last summer, the City Council and Coastal Commission approved Allen’s plan to rebuild the pier and cottages. The city, which owns half of the pier, is chipping in $800,000. The Allen family is putting up $1.6 million.

Although public outcry has not been as amplified as some expected over the demolition of the pier’s entrance building, Al Strohlein, a Pacific Beach resident who asked the site review board to study the building, spearheaded efforts to save the aging landmark.

“We need to save our past because we have no other measure of the flow of time,” he said. “This archway delineates the end of our community and the beginning of the ocean. It’s very romantic.”

The pier’s developers dubbed it the Million Dollar Pier and the Pacific Beach Pleasure Pier when it first opened. Carnival concessions lined the pier’s length. The archway at the entrance enticed visitors to walk along the 950-foot-long pier. At the pier’s end was the grand Crystal Ballroom, later demolished when the pier was extended.

“I foresee a typical reaction once the archway is torn down,” Strohlein said. “The people will be outraged. What we will have will not be an invitation to walk to the pier, but a barrier.”