‘Joy Zone’ Gone but the Fun Still Lingers : Seal Beach: Six distinct areas make up the city but ‘Old Town’ is the heart of the action.

For a place that gained fame originally as “Fun City” and “Coney Island of the West,” Seal Beach has come a long way. The north Orange County beach town still draws its share of fun and sun seekers, but nowadays, the city gets respect for more serious reasons.

When Donald and Diane Wortman went house hunting last year, they chose Seal Beach because they’d heard the school district was exceptional.

“That was the main reason,” says Donald Wortman, 44, a maintenance technician at Cal State Long Beach. “Also, it’s close to work and to the freeway.” Diane Wortman, 40, commutes daily to Orange County, where she is a social worker. At 4 and not-quite 2 years old, Alysha and Melan Wortman, aren’t ready for school yet. But when they do enter the Los Alamitos District serving the City of Seal Beach, they’ll join a student body that consistently places among the top 10% in statewide academic achievement tests.

“Our school system is a big draw for buyers,” said Cindy Ludwig of Century 21 Unlimited. She said the district’s high academic standing, low pupil-teacher ratio and 5% dropout rate are critical factors for many Seal Beach buyers.

The first city on the Orange County line, Seal Beach is bounded on the west by Long Beach, the east by Sunset Beach, Los Alamitos on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the south. At least six distinct areas, each with its own character--and price range--make up Seal Beach. Ludwig said prices start at about $260,000 for the College Park area and soar into the $3-million range for luxury custom houses in the palmy “Gold Coast” and Surfside Colony neighborhoods facing the ocean.

The Wortmans bought their four-bedroom, two-bath College Park East home last spring for $285,000. They enjoy the friendly neighborhood and don’t regret being four miles from the Pacific Ocean.

“I wanted to find the biggest house I could for my money,” said Donald Wortman, who moonlights as a children’s magician. The vaulted ceilings of his living room and entry way provide plenty of room for Wortman’s framed collection of magic posters, and a large back yard accommodates the rabbits, birds and canaries that figure in his magic shows.

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Colleen and Dan Romero live closer to the ocean, in the Cove section, a comfortable neighborhood of tract and remodeled custom homes tucked behind Pacific Coast Highway. Colleen enjoys the fact that she’s only a quarter mile from the water and can also walk to her job as department manager at the Seal Beach Pavilions Market.

“I like living here because you don’t have to have a car. I can walk everywhere,” she said.

Colleen Romero, 38, husband, Dan, a 46-year-old engineer for Marksman’s Products, and their two children, Nicole, 7, and Danny, 9, live in Colleen’s childhood home, which she inherited from her parents. She and Dan put the money they saved on the purchase price into a remodeling job, adding a family room, bathroom and swimming pool. Lyn Markman of Bay Town Realty estimates the three-bedroom, two-bath house is now worth at least $400,OOO--about 14 times what Colleen’s parents paid in 1958.

Colleen Romero has witnessed many changes in Seal Beach over the years and is not altogether happy with what she sees. Recently she watched as the home of a childhood friend was torn down and four went up on the same lot.

“Those places don’t appeal to me because they’re tall and skinny with no yard, and they make it just too crowded,” she said.

Joyce Ross-Parque, Century 21 real estate agent, agreed. She said the trend toward tearing down smaller homes and rental units close to the beach is destroying the diversity of the community.

“There’s an element that would like to see all of the old stuff torn down. When you have rentals, and less-expensive homes, you get a good mixture of people,” she said. “Now prices are getting to be outrageous. People can hardly afford to buy here.”

The trend toward small, crowded lots in Seal Beach was actually established late last century. What is now Old Town (the area between Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean) became “Tent City” as 25-foot by 25-foot lots sprouted makeshift summer cottages. German immigrant farmers were the first to discover the area’s charms as a summer resort while moving their produce from inland fields to Anaheim Landing, the port they established at Seal Beach’s southeastern tip. The shore’s cool breezes and mild ocean current lured farmers and their families to swim, boat and lounge on the beach after their hot, dusty trip.

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Even after the Southern Pacific Railroad routed traffic away from the port at Anaheim Landing, the popularity of the area increased. A large warehouse, previously used for shipping, was converted into a bathhouse.

Developers touted the resort as “Fun City” and “the Coney Island of the Pacific.” Chief among the developers was the man regarded as the father of Seal Beach, Phillip A. Stanton. He created an amusement park near the pier and dubbed it “The Joy Zone.” On many summer nights, screams from the Derby Cyclone Roller Coaster echoed across the bay into neighboring Long Beach.

The old wooden coaster is long gone--it burned down in the 1920s. But the Seal Beach Pier--one of the longest on the West Coast--has been an important focus of tourism for the town since 1906.

Despite damage from fires and storms that forced the city to rebuild it twice, the Seal Beach Pier is regarded by many as one of California’s finest. Sunset Magazine recently declared it one of its favorite West Coast piers and named the ‘50s style Ruby’s Diner at the pier’s end one of the five best pierside restaurants in Southern California.

Many who come to enjoy the beach or the pier first sample Old Town, the heart, soul and historical center of Seal Beach. Families licking ice-cream cones stroll down Main Street past the usual beach-town restaurants, clothing and gift shops. But the hardware store, food market, bank and bookstore dotting the way authenticate Seal Beach’s small town atmosphere and attest that this Main Street is more than a Disneyland facade.

If Main Street is the heart of Old Town, the funky little “Bookstore on Main Street” is its unofficial social center. Tourists, residents and other merchants drop in to browse the books, leaf through magazines, or just relax on the old wicker sofa and chat with owner Nathan Cohen.

A gnomish retired merchant mariner with shoulder-length gray hair and a penchant for jazz, Cohen enjoys presiding over the comfortably overflowing shop, and jokes, “I still have the same dirt on the floor as when I bought the place 10 years ago.” Cohen drives to the bookstore from his home in Long Beach, admitting wistfully “by the time I made up my mind I’d like to live here, I couldn’t afford it. Life would be perfect,” he sighs, “if I could live here and walk to work.”

The city is part of an original Spanish land grant purchased by banker I. W. Hellman in 1882--for three cents an acre. The Hellman family ran the 8,000-acre parcel as an enormous ranch with horses, sugar beets, barley, hay and grain, Japanese farmers leased much of this land through the 1920s and ‘30s, growing flowers and produce. This arrangement ended abruptly when they were forcibly relocated to camps during World War II. In 1944 the U.S. Navy acquired much of the land on the city’s eastern boundary and built the U.S. Naval Weapons Station.

Across the street from the Weapons Station spins the large sculptured globe of a Seal Beach landmark. Leisure World opened in 1962 as the first planned retirement community of its kind in the nation. Leisure World’s about 9,000 men and women make up about a third of the city’s population, raising the city’s median age to a relatively mature 52.

Ken and Libby Sampson are enjoying their retirement in the same Seal Beach home they’ve occupied since 1958. Ken, 71, a retired aerospace engineer and Libby, 69, paid $18,495 for their Hill section home shortly after moving from Maine more than 30 years ago. The house across the street from the Sampsons recently sold for $392,000. The 1,300-square-foot, three-bedroom 1 3/4 bath home where the Sampsons raised their two children is about half a mile from the ocean.

He and Libby also think their part of Seal Beach is ideal: “Being on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway we can walk to the ocean, but we aren’t really bothered by the summer crowds.” Ken Sampson says he came to the area because of job opportunities, but stayed for Seal Beach’s breezes: “I’ve traveled in all 50 states and lots of other countries and I think Seal Beach has the best climate in the U.S.--and maybe the world.”

At a Glance

Population:

1991 estimate: 24,200

1980-91 change: -6%

Median age: 52 years

Annual income:

Per capita: 24,330

Median household: 34,545

Household distribution:

Less than $15,000: 19.4%

$15,000 - $24,999: 18.2%

$25,000 - $34,999: 13%

$35,000 - $44,999: 17.6%

$45,000 - $74,999: 14.8%

$75,000 +: 17%