Tiny Enclave Uneasy Over Talk of Change : Cities: Dana Point wants to remake Doheny Village, an aging mixture of homes and businesses.

It’s back to the future in homespun Doheny Village.

This small, bowl-shaped hamlet, which has retained its rustic nature despite the visions of a succession of developers, including George Fullerton and the Doheny family, is back in the hands of the master planners.

This time, rather than private interests peddling their vision, it is the four-year-old city of Dana Point that is taking a turn at plotting the future of the 80-acre patchwork of modest homes, trailers, offices, mechanics’ garages and lumberyards.

It’s enough to make some of the locals nervous, although most agree that some change is long overdue.

“You bet I feel threatened,” said Norm Clow, owner of Serra Lumber for the last 25 years and a member of a group of local business owners--the Doheny Village Merchants Assn.--that has been hastily formed for protection.

“Every time people start talking about this area they say, ‘Get rid of the lumberyards, Get rid of the dayworkers,’ ” Clow said. “But this town needs this commercial and industrial area. People need these kinds of services.”

Others say bring on the changes. And the quicker the better.

“The opinions down there run the full range of emotion,” said City Councilman Mike Eggers. “Some people think change is putting in a new trash can and a tree. Others think we should level the place. Somehow we are going to have to come up with a happy median.”

Unhappy with her neighborhood’s deterioration, Teresa Loncono, 88, has put the green stucco home she has lived in for 69 years on the market.

“This used to be a wonderful area, so nice and quiet. We never even locked our doors,” Loncono said. “But not any more. There are drug deals, drunks and fights. I’m ready to move.”

Loncono lives in a small section of the village along the railroad tracks known as Serra, after Father Junipero Serra, the founder of Mission San Juan Capistrano about four miles inland along Camino Capistrano. Serra developed around a once-bustling train station that today is only a freight stop for the lumberyards, although the old Serra station sign still stands along the tracks.

Loncono’s old Serra neighborhood has evolved into an industrial area today. But other residents of the village are hoping to save their neighborhoods from a similar fate.

Across Doheny Park Road in the Beachwood Village trailer park, Bob Wilberg views change cautiously. From his vantage point, the 10-acre trailer park needs to be saved not only for his family, but for the elderly people who lease many of the 168 spaces.

“We’d like to buy the park so we can control our own destiny and own the land underneath our homes,” said Wilberg, who is seeking the city’s help in the park purchase and is lobbying to rezone the land exclusively for mobile home park use. “We have the whole spectrum of people here, but many are on fixed incomes. We would like to see this preserved as a portion of affordable housing within Dana Point.”

Beachwood resident Emily Thouin is one of several park residents who have made their way to City Hall in the past few weeks to plead with the City Council to save the park.

“To have to move from Beachwood Village would be a physical and financial disaster for me,” said Thouin, 68, a 10-year Beachwood resident.

The owner of most of the park is Lawrence F. Buchheim, who also happens to be one of the largest landowners in the village. He owns the old bowling alley that now houses the Calvary Church and a sprinkling of lots on both sides of Doheny Park Road.

Buchheim said he is willing to listen to offers from the trailer park residents or anyone else, but he too is unsure what the city intends for the village. He was among a dozen or so local leaders who spent several years doing a specific plan of the area for the county in the late 1980s, just before it was annexed into the new city of Dana Point.

“I don’t know what they’ve got in mind, no one’s talked to me about it,” said Buchheim, who now lives in San Juan Capistrano, though he was born on a farm in the village and went to elementary school there. “I thought we had a pretty good specific plan in place. We worked on it for two and a half years and now they want to do it all over again.

“To leave (the village) alone and not touch it is not going to work,” he said. “A lot of those old buildings are not in good shape. God forbid we ever get a fire started down there. (The buildings) are all so close, I don’t know if you could stop it.”

Part of the problem in remaking the village stems from its history, which saw the place cut up into tiny parcels, Buchheim said. A string of developers each cherished dreams of the area as a resort along the seashore, halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego and easily accessible because of its railroad line. They each envisioned a village of small lots for temporary weekend residences and housing for the train workers, he said.

“We really need to consolidate the property into larger parcels,” said Buchheim, who used to board passenger trains at the old Serra station. “Until you get something substantial in size, all you have is a hodgepodge.”

Mayor Karen Lloreda is among many Dana Point officials who claim that Doheny Village holds one of the keys to the future of the city. She lives in the palisades above the village and built her political base from the Capistrano Beach Community Assn., which includes Doheny Village in its area.

Lloreda sees the village as an industrial and commercial center and potentially a major revenue source for the city, which today depends on tourism and hotel taxes for more than a third of all city income.

“This is a very important area of our city,” she said. “If you look at Dana Point, we don’t have vast open space areas to develop new businesses. We can’t just rely on our hotels.”

Lloreda is quick to point out that the city study is only a plan. And the plan has nothing to do with redevelopment, a term that is considered a dirty word in some parts of the village, she said.

The city’s ill-fated attempt in 1990 to launch a redevelopment agency to finance changes in Doheny Village and other sections of the city was halted last year by an angry coalition of Dana Point residents who distrusted its goals.

Terry Lucarelli, a realtor and landowner in the village since 1967, still thinks the loss of redevelopment financing is a mistake that will cost the city valuable improvements.

“We were disappointed that redevelopment was squashed,” Lucarelli said. “I thought it was the only chance the village had. Now we will have to piecemeal improvements together. It will take 20 years instead of five.”

Lucarelli wants a plan that will allow the business district of the village “to come alive.”

“People must realize that if they want to jump in their cars and drive to a nice place to shop in their town, this could be it,” she said.

No matter how much public input is gathered, however, there are skeptics in the area who say the “politicians” or developers or real estate interests will ultimately win out.