Beleaguered Bash : Recession Rains on Redondo’s Centennial Celebration

Resilient Redondo Beach, which has built seven piers off its shore only to have them crash to the sea during storms, is going to celebrate its 100th birthday this year--if it’s the last thing it does.

Cities don’t turn 100 every day, so Redondo Beach started planning well in advance for its gala 1992 centennial celebration. It was to be a birthday celebration that this city of 60,000 residents would not soon forget, replete with commemorative pins and T-shirts and capped by a grand historical pageant highlighting the city’s colorful past.

But recessions don’t come every day either, and when this one hit, corporate donations and volunteers for the festive occasion all but dried up. And city officials, facing budget cuts and possible layoffs, became hesitant to spend taxpayers’ money on what is essentially a party.

Especially, Councilwoman Kay Horrell said, “when people are having difficulty making their mortgage payments.”

So the grand celebration, which was to cost more than $200,000 in public and private money, has been drastically scaled back.

Last month, when the grim financial picture became clear, the City Council nixed the costly historical pageant that was to be the centerpiece of the celebration. Left in place were less spectacular elements of the original plans: special old-fashioned centennial sweaters, pins bearing the official centennial logo and historical markers highlighting important city landmarks.

Besides the financial problems, the city’s grand visions were tripped up again when longtime resident Pat Dreizler, who was coordinating the whole affair, announced just before New Year’s that she was resigning as centennial chairwoman--just four months before the city’s April 29 anniversary. Dreizler said her job had been a frustrating venture.

“The magnitude of enthusiasm is not as it has been in the past for previous celebrations,” she said. “It wasn’t the lack of dollars that was the problem as much as the people, time, effort, energy and the dollars.”

The city allocated $100,000 for the centennial and hoped that would be matched with donations. The bulk of the budget was earmarked for the pageant, which was envisioned as an elaborate party at the Redondo Union High School Seahawk Bowl featuring a $25,000 fireworks show and dozens of children and adults in skits tracing the city’s history. Professional organizers were hired to plan the affair and seek out celebrities for appearances.

Although the organizing committee began with 100 members, most of the planning fell to a far smaller group and volunteerism was frustratingly low. “The spirit is strong,” Dreizler reported to the council last month, “but the response is slow and reflects inconsistent commitment.”

A popular resort town incorporated on April 29, 1892, Redondo Beach has a history resembling its quest for the centennial celebration--a tumultuous up-and-down affair. City officials and community leaders insist that the city will overcome these tough times just as it has those in the past and will have some sort of a bash to welcome the city’s second century.

“I don’t think it’s important that we celebrate by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars but we should let everybody know it’s our birthday,” said Mayor Brad Parton.

Early settlers of Redondo Beach in the late 1700s noticed a deep underwater canyon that made it a natural port. Ships from across the globe stopped at the city’s pier, which residents billed as a gateway to the rest of the world. But a federal committee chose San Pedro, not Redondo, as the site of the area’s major port around the turn of the century and soon all the shipping headed there.

So the city turned to tourism. In 1907, the Pacific Electric Railway hired a Hawaiian teen-ager to surf off the coast, and soon visitors, who had never seen such a spectacle, were flocking to see George Freeth, billed as “the man who can walk on water.”

The stream of tourists to Redondo’s two miles of coastline has continued, on and off, up to the present, bringing some problems along with the sales tax revenue. The police had to crack down on cruising along the beachfront Esplanade recently because of blaring boom boxes and roaring motors. And along with legitimate tourists have come gang members with spray cans in hand. But the city’s piers, lined with restaurants and amusements, have been a consistent draw over the years.

The scaled-back party now in the works is being managed by the city’s Visitor’s Bureau.

Specifics of the affair are uncertain. But there will be some sort of a party, organizers say, even if it is no more than a birthday cake with 100 candles and a hearty round of “Happy Birthday to You.”