Dana Point Looks to Past for Its Future : Revitalization: The new city is gearing up for a general plan that will use redevelopment as a financing tool. Its goals in part reflect the 1920s-era dreams of the community.

Back in the 1920s, when Dana Point was not much more than a patch of coastal sagebrush and sandstone, developers beckoned investors to “the land where your ship comes in.”

The town named for Richard Henry Dana was “historical California at its best,” according to real estate brochures of those days.

“The original plans for Dana Point were superb, really,” said local historian Doris Walker. “They included parks, a marketplace, a country club, areas for churches. But the Depression came along and they were never carried out.”

More than 60 years later, Dana Point today is 6 square miles that is part swank resort and part mishmash of run-down apartments and deteriorating businesses that early developers like Anna Walters of Laguna Beach and Los Angeles’ S.H. Woodruff had never envisioned. But this fledgling city, not quite 2 years old, has ambitions that reflect those dreams of the 1920s.

This summer, city officials have begun a rare two-pronged attack on its problems. The strategy, they say, is to redraw a plan for the city’s future while it patches up the remnants of its Roaring ‘20s days and other problems it has inherited in the decades since.

To do so, city officials will concurrently write a general plan, often called the blueprint of a city, and use cash from a redevelopment agency to pay for any changes. A 35-year, $241.5-million redevelopment project was launched last month.

For City Manager William O. Talley, the man responsible for both projects, these are tricky but necessary endeavors. State law requires all cities to write a general plan within 30 months of incorporation. But “redevelopment is a complex procedure, not something somebody starting a new city would ordinarily jump into,” Talley said. “But without redevelopment we would probably be unable to make the improvements we need.”

Part of the city’s job will be selling redevelopment to the community. Just the term “redevelopment” often frightens property owners, City Councilman Michael Eggers admits.

But Eggers claims the community has, for the most part, agreed that improvements all around the city are needed.

“No one argues with the fact that the city has problems,” Eggers said. “Redevelopment is not the negative some people used to feel, where cities would come in heavy-handed and move people around through eminent domain.”

Eggers often uses the property around the Price Club discount store, just down Camino Capistrano from the Dana Point’s Doheny Village area, as a prime example of what redevelopment can do for an area. Several years ago, the Price Club was lured to neighboring San Juan Capistrano as part of that city’s redevelopment.

Today, the Price Club sits in the middle of a bustling business district.

“Whenever anyone from that area comes to me worried about redevelopment, I just tell them, ‘Hey, just look down the street,’ ” Eggers said.

But before any redevelopment occurs, the city must rewrite its general plan, what senior planner Lance Schulte calls “the constitution of a city.”

“The general plan is really the biggest thing a city is ever going to do,” Schulte said. “It takes the goals of a city, its dreams, and puts them into policies. They become a document everyone refers to and, when a project comes before the city, we can ask, ‘Does it conform to the general plan?’ ”

Redevelopment, Schulte said, is “a financing system.”

“The system allows us to save a portion of the tax revenues from an area of the city to foster or spawn redevelopment in that area,” he said. “It’s basically a bootstrap program.”

State law dictates that before any area of a city can be targeted for redevelopment, it must be determined that the area suffers from blight of one sort or another. Four distinct areas of Dana Point have already been targeted.

* The Lantern District: About 167 acres of teeming apartments and small residences that has been labeled “crack alley” by some of its inhabitants. The area, part of the original subdivision of Dana Point known for several streets with lanterns in their titles, needs such improvements as new sidewalks, gutters, curbs and street lights which redevelopment can help pay for, Talley said.

* The PCH Couplet: About 58 acres in a wedge-shaped area between Pacific Coast Highway and Del Prado Avenue. Redevelopment could provide financing to relocate some of the mainly commercial area’s old businesses as well as provide incentives to merge properties to lure larger tenants, Talley said.

* Doheny Village: The area, about 148 acres in the old Capistrano Beach area along Doheny Park Road, has been identified by police as a high-crime area with deteriorating homes and businesses. Redevelopment could provide cash to relocate homeowners and lure new business, Talley said. Three large commercial developments have been targeted for the area, according to a feasibility study.

* The Harbor Bluffs: This area, about 13 acres owned by the county overlooking Harbor Point Drive, includes unstable bluffs due to excess water and poor drainage. Cove Road, which winds up the bluffs from the harbor, is also unstable, according to a city report.

The first steps in the general plan, outside of hiring an outside consultant, is a series of three open houses in three separate areas of the city, the first one being Friday at the City Council chambers. The idea is to open the process up to the community, according to Talley.

“This won’t be a vision I have, it will be a vision the community has, backed up by the general plan and the redevelopment agency,” he said.

Part of that vision includes the small-town atmosphere that Dana Point will always maintain, Eggers claims.

“What I see is a small town with a retail base to serve the residents, but also one that has the attractions to be a resort destination,” Eggers said. “But we don’t want to destroy the character of a small town we moved here for in the first place.”

While city officials have plunged forward with both projects, they admit their ambitions put a strain on the city’s six-person planning staff.

“It’s going to be extremely wild for the next several months,” Eggers said. “Instead of reading 2- or 3-inch agendas, people will have to deal with 8- to 10-inch reports. But it works out very well for the city.”