On Road to Change : Two cities’ plans to redevelop Highway 101 may mean the death of the roadway’s charm, critics say

Every now and then, when the hustle-bustle freeway life throws a roadblock across his mental health, Greg Jorgenson hops inside his turquoise 1951 Ford Ranch Wagon and takes a little detour along Highway 101, pretending things were like they used to be.

He grips the big steering wheel with both hands, and lets his shoulder-length hair flap in the gentle coastal breeze as he glides past scenic stretches of white-capped ocean waves lapping the rugged North County coastline--views framed like pretty postcards through his driver’s window.

And he smiles as he passes all the funky, anything-goes roadside attractions--the taco shops, screaming billboards, Art Deco road signs, mom-and-pop transmission joints, and riff-raff motels reincarnated from some spooky old Hitchcock thriller.

It’s a drive that takes him back in time--reflecting an era of black-and-white TV and “Burma Shave” signs, when hamburger stands featured smiling car hops, and where full-service gas stations were the rule, not the dated exception.

Like the long-gone cross-country travelers who once got their kicks on Route 66, Greg Jorgenson has his fun on Highway 101.

“For a lot of people like myself, Highway 101 is the only road to drive,” says the 35-year-old Oceanside writer and coastal gadfly. “It’s the West Coast symbol of the open road, the epitome of freedom.”

Last month, Jorgenson began writing a weekly column about Highway 101 for a North County newspaper, attempting to capture the essence of “that mystical stretch of earth built from asphalt and the dreams of those in search of the ultimate cruise.”

But Jorgenson sees danger signs ahead for his beloved old highway.

This year, two North County cities--Encinitas and Solana Beach--have begun long-term redevelopment projects in an attempt to shape the future use of their stretches of Highway 101.

Citing the road’s decaying infrastructure and haphazard commercial character, officials say the coast highway needs a guiding hand to lead it into the next century and beyond.

Both cities have created redevelopment agencies and hired outside consulting firms to draw up plans. Meanwhile, citizen’s advisory groups have begun mulling over futuristic visions of what Highway 101 might look like in, say, 2025.

So what’s in store for 101? There are shortcomings on specifics, but no lack of bureaucratic esoterica. One Solana Beach goal, for instance, intends to “remedy, remove, and prevent physical blight and economic obsolescence,” whatever that might foretell.

They are also talking about such concepts as architectural standards, adequate parking and pedestrian access.

So, the future of the California coast’s most colorful icons is in the hands of bureaucrats, residents and business people. And there’s no little apprehension of what kind of conformity they may try to legislate on the old highway.

But roadside redevelopment, officials insist, does not necessarily mean the wholesale replacement of time tested mom-and-pop shops with new anonymous mini-malls, and 1,000-room chain hotels.

“Redevelopment is not a tool for changing the character of Highway 101,” said Solana Beach City Manager Michael Huse. “If anything, it’s a tool to retain it.”

Like other native San Diegans of his generation, the 43-year-old Huse has vivid memories of leisurely drives his family once took along Highway 101 to Los Angeles or Tijuana. For him, this is not just another city project, it’s dealing with a part of his own past.

“Over the years, that highway really became the Route 66 of the California coast,” the La Mesa native recalled. “My parents are from Missouri, and we used to go back during the summer and drive the real Route 66, past the curio shops, motels and unique old gas stations.

“Whenever we drove Highway 101, I’d get the same feeling. There’s no doubt about it, it’s an image a lot of us would like to see preserved. When I’m 81, I still want to be able to go over to Roberto’s taco stand on Highway 101 for three rolled tacos.”

Ann Omsted agrees. When the Encinitas city councilwoman looks into her crystal ball, she sees only good changes coming, for example, for the cypress tree-canopied stretch of the highway winding through Leucadia.

“I love that road just the way it is,” she said. “If you want modern 1990s California glitz, go inland to El Camino Real. But if you want an old-time flavor--the taco stands and auto repair places--you go to Highway 101.

“Modern malls have their purpose. But there are times when the spirit needs the nourishment and individuality of a drive along 101. We want the atmosphere to be funky. Is there such a thing as expensive funky?”

But Jorgenson and many Highway 101 business owners in both cities have their doubts. When city planners get together, they say, the result will be something less than the eclectic mix of muffler shops and flea markets the highway supports today.

They fear the down-to-earth aesthetics of the old road--and what it has represented of California’s motoring past--will be lost forever, and that conformity will wash across the old Tarmac highway.

“Especially in Leucadia, part of the road’s charm is its Okie Depression architecture, funkified by the hippies during the 1960s,” Jorgenson said.

Along the milelong Leucadia stretch, for example, there exists a mental health clinic, a Tarot card reader, acupuncturist and flower shop run by a woman known as The Plant Lady.

There’s a vintage clothing store with a roadside mannequin with a 33-rpm record for a hat and musical notes for a brassiere, leaning against a pink Cadillac with two flat tires. There’s a psychic book store and doughnut shop, along with several used-car dealerships and taco stands--few of which could exist in a modern mall, Jorgenson said.

“You just can’t program that out-of-step look, that funky mix, into a city’s plans, saying ‘We’re going to be funky,’ ” Jorgenson said. “It’s got to come about naturally.”

Since it was built in the 1930s, covering the old El Camino Real trail used by 19th-Century Catholic missionaries, the four-lane Highway 101 has been more than just a road for the locals who traversed it.

For years, before all the freeway-building frenzy of the 1950s, Highway 101 was the only link for a whole string of coastal cities between Los Angeles and San Diego, locals say.

It was the lifeline of the North County beachside communities, serving both as stop-and-go neighborhood strip and invitation to the open road--an interstate highway having a 1,644-mile romance with the coast, running from the Mexican border to the tip of northwest Washington.

For Jorgenson, who writes his column for the weekly Beach News under the pseudonym Les Burden Jr., part of the allure of Highway 101 was the fact that you could drive a few miles up the coast.

Or, if you were in the mood, you could go all the way--and drive clear to Canada and beyond.

“And all along the way, there were all these wonderfully tacky old full-service businesses,” Jorgenson said. “Most of them are gone now. But if you get into an old car like this and squint your eyes a little bit, you can imagine things like they used to be.”

Cosmo Sciacca is a retired California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop who once patrolled Highway 101 from Del Mar to Carlsbad during the early 1960s. He remembers the road like he would an old beer-drinking buddy.

He recalls sipping countless cups of coffee with the long-distance truckers at Ruthies coffee shop in what is now Solana Beach. The truckers used to line their rigs along the highway like some big wall of rubber and metal.

And the boys needed a rest. Because those were the days when the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego took an entire afternoon.

Sciacca remembers the dozens of Los Angeles-area drivers he would ticket week after week as they sped down Highway 101 toward Tijuana for the weekend, racing to place bets at the horse track there.

“They’d say, ‘Hurry it up with the ticket, will ya? They’re going to close the betting window on me,’ ” the 63-year-old Sciacca recalled.

And he remembers the tragic scenes of bloody car crashes along the stretch through Leucadia, where weary Los Angeles-bound motorists--tuckered out from a weekend of partying south of the border--would fall asleep at the wheel and ram head-on into the big roadside cypress and eucalyptus trees.

Bill (Willie) Strickland started patroling Highway 101 on a CHP motorcycle in 1936, when he used to hide behind billboards to “stop ‘em, pinch ‘em and let ‘em go.” Now 84 and long-retired, he can still recall all those funky Highway 101 road signs.

Once, Strickland even became part of that coastal roadside theater--the CHP put his picture on a big old billboard advising driver caution: “Don’t Take Chances in Traffic,” it read.

Most days, though, Sciacca and Strickland used to love to ride their motorcycles through traffic along 101, watching, as Strickland recalled, “the Marines go one way, the sailors the other.”

But, when Interstate 5 opened in the late 1960s, the job changed. The cars traveled too fast there. Suddenly, the fun was gone.

Eventually, fewer and fewer cars traversed the old coastal route. Caltrans officials in San Diego County took down the venerable Highway 101 shields that were once posted along the freeway.

That’s when 101 became a retired road--a blue highway.

“We handed over the upkeep to the local communities,” said Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson. “They took care of it. And, if they wanted to rename it, they went right ahead. It was their baby.”

As a result, in some North County communities, Highway 101 developed more aliases than a bad-check artist. It became known as the Pacific Coast Highway, the coastal corridor, San Diego 21 or Old Highway 101.

In Del Mar, it became Camino del Mar. In downtown Encinitas, it was now 1st Street. In Carlsbad, it became Carlsbad Boulevard. And Hill Street in Oceanside.

Some communities like Solana Beach, however, have decided to keep things the way they always were--they have continued calling their stretch of the old road Highway 101.

“It’s a little sad to see the name change from community to community,” said Solana Beach city manager Huse. “It’s still the same stretch of road, yet it has different names. It would be nice to get back to the old name up and down the entire coast.”

The highway’s name isn’t the only thing that has changed in recent years. When I-5 opened, most of the businesses moved inland with the traffic. So did the population, which began to expand to more inland communities, bringing with it the locally oriented commerce.

What was left, in the opinion of some residents, was an eyesore. Seedy looking used-car lots, including one with hanging pinatas and a huge banner that advertises “Financiamos,” as a come-on to its largely Latino clientele.

There are liquor stores, run-down motels that cater to lowbrow, long-term tenants. And all those taco shops, seemingly one on every corner.

“Those nasty old motels with all those long-term tenants, I’d like to see them gone,” said Kirsten Cline, who owns a bed and breakfast hotel overlooking Highway 101 in Leucadia. “A few of the billboards could go. And those taco shops, we could definitely eliminate a few of them.”

Cline is a member of one of two committees in Encinitas that are meeting to hammer out a future vision for Highway 101. Similar meetings are being held in Solana Beach.

Once a plan has been formulated--in both cities, as early as next summer--public hearings will be held to gain final community approval for the respective redevelopment areas.

For now, though, Cline and her committee counterparts are weighing the merits of an improved sewer system along 101 in Leucadia; how to develop more pedestrian access and get people to keep their businesses tidy.

There’s also talk of a plan for color coordination for businesses as well as architectural standards.

“A couple of the colors people chose for their places seem pretty outlandish,” Cline said. “And some of the businesses just attract the wrong type of crowd--so that you’re almost afraid to go out at night. We’re going to have to deal with those kinds of issues.”

Committee member Morgan Mallory agrees.

“It’s a mess,” he said of the strip of 101 near his Leucadia frame shop. “Nobody wants another La Jolla or Laguna Beach here. But the ambience of this old road is being diluted by all the trash, the used cars, and the homeless. That’s what we’re going to try and change.”

Both Mallory and Cline say they would like to see the Leucadia stretch of 101 become an art colony that would attract locals and outsiders alike for the art stores and antique shops.

“As long as people have pride of ownership, that’s all we ask,” Cline said. “It’s just sinful to see it so dirty. It’s like Tijuana-ville in some spots.”

Lawrence Thompson has an answer for that one. He and his wife, Yvonne, run the Royal Motor Inn in Leucadia, right next store to a spanking new Ocean Inn. Thompson says his place has just as much right to see 2025 as the new guy.

“Just because we’re a little old motel doesn’t mean we house riffraff here. It doesn’t mean we run a whorehouse,” he said. “But that’s what they want you to think.”

But, whatever happens during redevelopment, Cline says, neither she nor the other committee members plan to dictate what types of roadside businesses will grace Highway 101. The economy will take care of that--whoever can survive, will, she says.

Charlotte Garrett, Leucadia’s Plant Lady, says she knows better.

“They should leave this road just like it is, they shouldn’t change it one bit,” said the Leucadia florist whose Plant Lady shop has become famous over the past 14 years, both her colorful character and flower arrangements.

“Sure places are a little dirty, a little run-down. But that’s the way people like them. That’s what this road is all about. Even if I apologize for the dirt, people say, ‘That’s OK. It’s like a country atmosphere here. We wouldn’t have it any other way.’ ”

Garrett insists that, once redevelopment begins, rents on businesses like hers will undoubtedly be raised. “Then we won’t exist anymore,” said the 69-year-old, who began her business in 1976 selling flowers from a Volkswagen van parked along Highway 101 in Leucadia.

“Businesses will come that can afford the high rent. And that’s what they want anyway.”

Down the road at the Leucadian bar, Andy Kentera isn’t ready to throw in the towel to redevelopment. Kentera opened his ocean-motif bar in 1954, and since then has kept the status quo there.

Even today, the Leucadian is so dark it takes the eyes a full minute to become accustomed to the wan light. “It’s not too dark in here,” the bartender says. “It’s too light outside.”

The problems along Highway 101, Kentera says, can surely be blamed on out-of-town owners who don’t care “if there are 10 wetbacks to a room in their motels.”

The bar owner says he’s run a tight ship all these years. And no City Council is going to make him walk the redevelopment plank before his time. “I’m sticking around until they throw me out,” he said of the Council, whose members sit on the board of the redevelopment agency.

“I’ve been here longer than the whole lot of them anyway.”

For now, images of Highway 101--and its roadside theater--continue to find their way into the popular culture. This month, a band named after the venerable highway will tour Southern California. And a new book, “U.S. 101--A Highway Adventure” was published this fall.

That’s the way Greg Jorgenson likes it. These days, he’s on the road, dreaming up new 101 column ideas--like the best taco shops, trailer parks, the stories behind the weird empty lots and even weirder people.

“Highway 101 is my beat,” he said. “And that’s the way I like it.”