A Cloud Hangs Over Crystal Cove’s Future : Lifestyle: Residents have long enjoyed a beach that evokes the serenity of a bygone era. But when their leases run out next June, the state plans to evict them and convert their 1930s cottages to public use.

Walking down the long rickety stairway to the beach here is a bit like descending into the Twilight Zone. There is an old wooden bridge crossing a moat to a row of classic beach cottages. The sand is clean and expansive with nary a soul on it. And directly beneath a broken timepiece is a sign advising visitors to “Please set your clocks back to 1930.”

The admonition is appropriate. For 60 years along this quiet stretch of beach, listed in the National Register of Historic Places as “the last intact example of vernacular beach architecture,” time has stood still.

Next June, however, Crystal Cove’s residents will see their 10-year lease with the state expire, raising the possibility of mass evictions. If that happens, residents say, it will be the end of an era.

“It would be like having our hearts cut out,” says Vivian Falzetti, 47, who has lived at Crystal Cove, halfway between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach, for 16 years. “It would destroy the cove.”

The seeds of Crystal Cove’s dilemma were planted early in the century when the beach, then owned by the Irvine Co., became a favorite stomping ground for Irvine family guests who were fond of riding buckboard wagons down the dirt road that is now MacArthur Boulevard to spend an afternoon at the water’s edge. During the 1920s and ‘30s the company rented some of the land to vacationers who built cottages on it, a process inadvertently abetted by a Hollywood producer who, after leasing the cove for a series of South Sea island-themed movies, left several sets that were later turned into homes.

Eventually there were 45 beach houses in all, maintained by the people who built them but sitting on land leased from the Irvine Co. by the month or by the year.

Then in 1979, the land changed hands. The company sold the place to the state, which promptly made it part of the Crystal Cove State Park and issued 90-day eviction notices to the residents who had lived there for years. A protracted legal battle resulted in a new 10-year lease, but upon its expiration on June 30, 1993, state officials say, they plan to evict residents again and convert the cottages into low-cost rental units, youth hostels, offices, concession stands and perhaps a marine science study center.

“The land was purchased with tax dollars with the intent of turning it over for public use,” says John Kelso-Shelton, a state park superintendent who oversaw the cove until last month. “If you don’t convert it to public use you are subsidizing someone’s private residence. The more we delay the more we are betraying the public trust.”

Residents argue that it is economically unfeasible to convert the cottages to public use in light of the state’s current monetary difficulties. Not only will California lose the $540,000 it collects annually in lease fees, they say, but it will incur considerable costs in bringing the cottages up to code. And maintenance, residents say, will be much less consistent at the hands of the public than under the care of people whose families, in some cases, have been there for generations.

To make their point, the residents have formed an organization called the Crystal Cove Conservancy, which will formally request an extension of their lease within 45 days.

“Some of these places are so fragile that you can knock them down,” says John Killen, the organization’s secretary and a cove resident for 22 years. “The state doesn’t have the money to make these units livable for the public . . . and if they just sit idly, they will deteriorate.”

For the time being, though, life goes on pretty much as it always has at Crystal Cove. While the beach is open to the public, only residents are allowed to drive down the winding road to the sand. Others have to park across Coast Highway and take an underpass or, when the parking lot is closed as it is this summer, leave their cars half a mile away at the state beach parking lot and make their way in on a bike trail.

The picturesque village is still favored by artists and filmmakers. In recent years, “Beaches,” starring Bette Midler, was filmed here, as well as a movie called “The Creator,” starring Peter O’Toole. And it is difficult to find an art show in nearby Laguna that does not feature at least one view of the tiny cove.

“This is God’s country,” says Ann Lindsey, a school principal from Clovis who spends her summers at Crystal Cove with relatives who have a cottage. “There’s a beauty and a solitude here.”