CRYSTAL COVE : Date Shake Stand Tasteful Once Again

The quaint little shack is still bright yellow with white trim, still sits above the historic Crystal Cove community on Pacific Coast Highway as it has for 45 years, and still serves date shakes, fruit smoothies, sandwiches and soft drinks.

But everything else about the stand has changed. With guidance from the state parks system and the county Department of Health, the building’s new owners have spent $50,000 installing new windows with screens, new siding, a new tile floor and a new roof. A metal shield has been inserted inside the walls and a foot deep underground to keep out the rats that resulted in a shutdown of the stand last April.

“We did an extensive remodel, just what the health department asked for,” said Arden Flamson, whose family now owns the stand. Flamson’s son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Katie Flamson, will run the business.

The Flamsons, who also own The Place in Corona del Mar, won the bidding for what they now call the Crystal Cove Date Shake Shack last April by offering the state the best return for the use of the property.

In exchange for their five-year lease of the date shake stand, the Flamsons will also have to serve as a concessionaire to the beachgoers on the sand below their stand.

“That’s in our next phase, which we hope to have ready in about three weeks,” Arden Flamson said. “We will offer a rental service with umbrellas, beach chairs and suntan oil.”

The shack sits on land between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar that is now part of the 3,800-acre Crystal Cove State Park.

The state bought the park from the Irvine Co. for $32 million in 1979 and the land became part of the park system in 1984, said Jack Roggenbuck, Orange County district superintendent of the state park system. With the Irvine Co.’s planned development of the Newport Beach coastal area, the park and the date shake shack will soon be surrounded by buildings, Roggenbuck said.

“We’ll be an island of green here,” he said.

The stand has been open since Tuesday, but an official grand opening is planned for this weekend, Flamson said.