Dana Point Will Put On a New Look : Architecture: New design standards won’t require the Cape Cod theme that the city had mandated to distinguish itself from its neighbors. This makes builders and merchants happy.

Alex McGeary felt like celebrating.

For years, McGeary has fought to make Dana Point look like the California coastal city that it is and shed the New England Cape Cod appearance its laws have required. As the first of 440 spindly palm trees began lining Street of the Golden Lantern this fall, he knew his battle was nearly over.

“Hurray,” said McGeary, longtime owner of the Dana Point Cafe/Wine Bar and a leader of a downtown merchants group. “We’ve come a long way. The palm tree war is over. Now we can send those Cape Cod standards back to New England where they belong.”

Since the late 1970s, builders have been held to a strict Cape Cod design theme throughout Dana Point’s downtown. Paint colors were limited to blues and grays, and buildings had to conform in style to the wood-sided structures with steep, gabled roofs that dominate the central part of the city.

The Cape Cod idea of Dana Point leaders at the time was to distinguish the city from its Spanish- and Mission-style neighbors--San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano--as well as to recall its namesake, Boston author Richard Henry Dana.

But today, the strict rules and non-California theme have been lifted by city planners who are attempting to appease downtown merchants like McGeary. Last week, Dana Point officials released a draft version of new, eclectic building and landscape standards in the first step toward banishing the late 1970s-era Eastern Seaboard look that many local architects have grown to dread.

The city’s Planning Commission will begin a public review of the new standards Dec. 1. And if approved, they are expected to go to the City Council early next year.

The new design rules are as liberal as the former rules were strict, said Edward Knight, the city’s director of development. The concept of a city theme has been discarded, and individual building designs will be judged on their own merits, not their adherence to a preordained style, Knight said.

“The bent now is toward more quality of design,” Knight said. “We are not really dictating a certain type of roof or a certain type of window anymore. Nothing is precluded now.”

While McGeary’s battle with the planners was over his desire to plant palm trees that did not fit the Cape Cod landscape standards, he had allies among architects who claim their artistic hands were tied by the New England style.

“The Cape Cod look has its place, but not as a mandated style,” said Lynn Muir, a Dana Point architect who has been an outspoken critic of the requirements. “Insisting on that look was a very, very bad deal for the city. I prefer using materials like brick and stucco that are indigenous to our area.”

Lance B. Schulte, the city’s senior planner, said the new guidelines stress compatibility to the surrounding area.

“This will free the city from the Cape Cod idea,” Schulte said. “We prefer judging a building on the quality of the design, not necessarily its conformance to a particular style. If it’s Spanish, contemporary or Cape Cod, so be it.”

The old Cape Cod/Eastern Seaboard look was contrived in the late 1970s--before the community incorporated as a city--when a community group called the Dana Point Citizens for Action met with county planners to create the Dana Point Specific Plan.

At that time, there was a desire to create an identity for the community because many residents were worried that it was becoming a hodgepodge of unsightly triplexes and fourplexes, said Susan Hinman, a 24-year resident of Dana Point whose diligent lobbying with the county helped win her a job as an aide to 5th District Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.

“There was a great interest in the community then as to what the future of Dana Point was, just as there is now,” Hinman said. “Most of us wanted to foster a sense of logical, sensible development that worked well.”

For those reasons, the Cape Cod theme satisfied the residents on several fronts: Not only did it provide a unifying theme, but it created an identity that would set Dana Point apart from the Mission and Spanish style prevalent in both neighboring cities of San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente.

“There was a concern that we didn’t want to be just like San Juan Capistrano,” Hinman said. “We wanted something different.”

The residents also wanted control over the design in their community, which the plan they negotiated with the county would allow, said Peter Herman, Riley’s aide at the time and one of the organizers of the local effort.

“The whole background of the (design) plan was a reaction against the kind of land uses the board had been approving,” said Herman, a Laguna Niguel resident. “Community leaders were of the opinion that anything that was proposed up in Santa Ana would get approved. Most of the buildings had little, if any, architectural distinction.”

The Cape Cod theme had an added benefit: It underlined a proud portion of Dana Point’s historical character, linking it to its namesake.

“People wanted a connection with the Eastern community from which Dana had come,” Herman said.

So Cape Cod it was. For the next decade, downtown builders and developers designed a new version of the New England seaboard--the gable-roofed, wood-sided, blue and gray buildings that now dot the city.

In some cases, the theme has clicked. Perhaps most noteworthy of that style is the 5-year-old, 350-room Dana Point Resort, which has now become a landmark on a hill near the harbor.

Penny Elia, the resort’s director of public relations, said the theme has wound up being a boon for the hotel.

“It works great for us,” said Elia, who has been with the resort since it opened. “It has a charm, a style and a grace that works for us. People seem to feel we have a warm house on the hill, which is what it looks like. People comment on it all the time.”

Possibly because of the quality and workmanship of its Cape Cod look, the resort was described as the most recognized building in Dana Point by respondents to a survey that the city conducted before writing the new design plan they released last week, said Knight, the development director.

“It was the resort, far and away,” Knight said of the survey results. “People really react positively to it. Perhaps it was because of the detail and quality put into the resort, however. New England architecture is tough to do.”

Muir, a resident of Dana Point since the late 1940s, agrees that Cape Cod works in some places. He objects to the obtrusiveness of a theme.

“I’ve been fighting for design guidelines that don’t specify a design,” he said. “I’d like to see performance standards, but not guidelines that tell an architect what to do.”