Historic House a Cash-and-Carry Deal : Oceanside: One dollar is the asking price for a classic Queen Anne cottage, which the city says must be moved to another downtown lot.

If ever a building had the right to feel insulted, it’s the historic Johansen House in Oceanside.

Nobody wants it, not even for a measly dollar.

The once-proud home of Sorren P. Johansen, blacksmith and skilled carriage maker, is a classic Queen Anne cottage.

The building is a landmark in Oceanside. For a while in 1887, a year before the city became a city, it served as the local post office.

It’s a fixer, but the walls are sturdy. Under the peeling beige paint and the mud-brown trim, there is no dry-rot.

But, in this buyer’s market, no buyers can be found.

City officials have been trying for more than three months to get someone, anyone, to buy the 106-year-old home on Cleveland Street for the token dollar.

The catch is that the Johansen House is in the path of a $6.5-million housing project expected to begin construction within nine months, and a buyer will have to move the home to another lot.

And that lot must be downtown.

The City Council came up with the idea as a way to keep the old home intact and in the historic area of the city. Otherwise, it will be trucked 7 miles east to Heritage Park on Peyri Road, city redevelopment director Patricia Hightman said.

The Oceanside Historic Preservation advisory commission wants the building to stay downtown.

“The intent of our commission is . . . to prevent what has become the Disneylandization of historic structures,” said Bill Booth, preservation commission chairman.

That is what has happened to other historic downtown buildings, such as the old Blade newspaper building and the jail. Both have been installed in Heritage Park, near the San Luis Rey Mission, where they are part of what looks like a movie set from a Western.

It may be cute, but it looks nothing like old-time Oceanside, historians say.

Heritage Park “is a nice place, it’s a wonderful place,” Booth said. But it represents a trend of past years “to take all historic structures and move them into a park. That’s all well and good, but the goal now is to keep them in their original environment, because that’s where their historic significance is the greatest.”

Booth and Rita Baker, a senior city planner and history buff, compare it all to what happened to London Bridge.

That old bridge was bought by a rich American developer, trucked stone by stone to Lake Havasu City in Arizona, and reassembled as a tourist attraction near the Colorado River, far from the Thames and its London origins.

Sitting there in the middle of the desert, says Baker, “it’s not going to tell you anything about London.”

City officials say they are puzzled why nobody has bought the building.

‘I have no idea,” said Baker, who spent six hours one day holding an open house to attract buyers. About half a dozen people dropped by, she said, but none bought.

The city also sent a notice of the bargain sale to the registered owners of every vacant parcel in the downtown. Again, no takers.

“We’re making the attempt, but, if the people don’t want to do it, we can’t force them,” said Mayor Larry Bagley.

It’s ironic, says Bagley, that the city was able to preserve the nearby red-brick Travelers Hotel, which according to lore was once a house of prostitution, while “we seem to lose . . . other buildings with a less sporting background.”

“It’s a cute little building,” Hightman said.

Her agency is negotiating the deal between the home developer and the city, which owns the land surrounding the building that since 1959 has served as offices for the city vehicle maintenance center.

The city bought a new, bigger equipment maintenance yard a couple of years ago on Oceanside Boulevard and is now eager to unload the valuable Cleveland Street property, which is only two blocks from the beach.

Baker and Hightman say they are still hoping the building will be bought by a downtown landowner and converted into an office.

If not, says Hightman, it might become part of a historic block that may be created in the next couple of years. Her agency is in the process of a bond sale--now blocked by a lawsuit--that would give redevelopment enough money to buy up a 3rd Street nude club and porno movie house and level them.

There, Hightman said, might be the place for the Johansen House, which could be rented out as an artist’s studio.

“That’s what I’d like to do,” she said.

Other old homes threatened by development could be moved to the historic block, Hightman says. Those include a little cottage on Pacific Street that everyone calls “the Top Gun House,” since some scenes from the movie starring Tom Cruise were filmed there.

If all else fails, the Johansen House will be on its way east, Hightman says.

“If we are unable to keep it downtown, we’ll move it out to Heritage Park,” she said.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep if they pick it up and move it to Heritage Park,” Booth said. “I would certainly rather see it in Heritage Park than not see it at all.”