Placid Coastal Town Splits on Issue of Growth : San Clemente: Some cherish small-town flavor while others want more retail shops and restaurants.

San Clemente first came to national attention in 1970, when then-President Richard M. Nixon bought Casa Pacifica and set up the Western White House there. Nixon sold the property in 1979, but curious visitors to the town still want a glimpse of the ocean-bluff estate.

Since Nixon’s time, San Clemente, the southernmost coastal city in Orange County, has grown into a community of many attractions.

Right now, it’s somewhere between quiet surfers’ paradise and busy tourists’ haven. Like other Southern California beach cities, San Clemente, population 42,000, grew up during the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years, slow-growthers have dueled business boosters, who would like to see larger, faster development and a more concerted effort to attract tourists with new downtown shops, restaurants and hotels.

Even with its growth, San Clemente has a lot to offer, according to those who live there. San Clemente’s home prices may seem high, compared with the rest of the country, but they are modest for coastal Southern California.

“We’re the lowest-priced beach city on the coast, except Oceanside,” said Byron Marshall, a co-owner of San Clemente Real Estate. Now is an especially opportune time to buy, according to Marshall, because prices are off 10% to 15%, even more for the most expensive homes.

“We have single-family homes all the way from $150,000 to several million,” Marshall said. “Several of the townhouse developments would be the entry level. They start around $92,000. You can get ocean-view townhouses starting around $200,000.”

In the older southwest portion of the city, beach houses start about $250,000. The closer you get to the beach, the higher the price. Homes within a few hundred yards of the sand start about $400,000.

Permanent residents of San Clemente can feel pinched for space on weekends, when visitors pack wide sidewalks along Avenida Del Mar, the main downtown street.

But San Clemente has not yet become a total tourist trap. Surfers still love the place. Many of them grew up in San Clemente and stayed on to start surf-related businesses such as Astrodeck, Stewart Surfboards, B.C. Surfboards, Rip Curl USA and Rainbow Sandals.

Local surfer Brian Clark owns the Beach Club, a surfwear and accessories shop in downtown San Clemente.

Clark, who has lived in San Clemente since 1964, said contemporary San Clemente is a different place than the old one Clark remembers. But he still likes it.

“It’s definitely more crowded in the water,” he said. “There have been moments over the years when that’s become a problem, when people get aggravated. But now people expect a crowd if it’s sunny and the surf’s up.

“There’s been a strong slow-growth movement since the early 1980s (the city restricts residential building permits to 500 a year). San Clemente is one of the better places in Southern California for families. Overall, the community still has a small-town flavor, even though quite a few people live here.”

Non-surfers love San Clemente too, for good reason. It gets less than 10 inches of rain a year, and unlike some of California’s frequently foggy coastal cities, San Clemente is sunny 340 days out of 365.

Peter and Monica Cavaretta and their daughters, ages 7 and 10, moved to San Clemente from Hartford, Conn., last year, when he took a job as corporate auditor at Toshiba in Irvine, 30 miles from San Clemente. Monica is a schoolteacher, in the process of getting licensed in California.

The Cavarettas bought a Mediterranean-style five-bedroom home east of the freeway in a development called Flora Vista. They paid in the mid-$300,000s.

“San Clemente has the feel of a real town,” Peter Cavaretta said. “In New England, the center of every town has a green. San Clemente is one of the few Southern California towns that has that feeling. It has a main street that leads right down to the pier.

“Laguna Niguel looked a little too crowded. It appears that developers put up all the houses they could per square inch. In Mission Viejo, we were concerned about the quality of the air. Our kids are asthmatic. And inland, it’s too hot.

“When we saw San Clemente, we thought it was pretty nice. It has more open space, and the ocean breezes mean better air.”

For the most part, San Clemente is living up to the Cavarettas’ expectations.

“We’ve met some really nice people in our neighborhood,” Peter Cavaretta said. “On weekends, there’s so much to do. There’s the beach, amusement parks, county fairs. The weather makes it all possible.”

But along with sunshine, the Cavarettas have spied at least one dark cloud: the school system in San Clemente.

“Class sizes are enormous,” Cavaretta said. “In Connecticut, the girls’ classes had 16 or 18 students. Here, we’re talking in the 30s.”

Jackie Price, director of community relations for the Capistrano Unified Schools District, acknowledged that classes are bigger in California than on the East Coast, and that San Clemente High School has the lowest test scores among three high schools in the district.

“But we have some of the lowest class sizes of any district in Orange County,” Price said. “And our test scores are competitive. Our students come out in the top 25%.”

While other districts have dropped music, Capistrano is known for excellent music programs in grades K through 12, Rice said. Capistrano District schools are equipped with new technology, especially computers, she added. Also, Las Palmas, a magnet elementary school, recently received an $800,000 federal grant for a “double immersion program” that will mix English- and Spanish-speaking children to help both become bilingual.

The development where the Cavarettas bought, Flora Vista, is part of the largest new-housing tract in San Clemente. Flora Vista represents only 388 of the 2,000 or so homes that will eventually be built on 1,000 acres owned by Dallas-based Centex, which was recently ranked as the largest builder in the world by Builder magazine.

In Flora Vista, houses ranging from 1,994 to 2,856 square feet are priced from the mid-$200,000s to the mid-$300,000s. In nearby Encanto, another Centex development, homes of 2,368 to 3,286 square feet range from under $300,000 to the high $300,000s.

Besides being popular with families, San Clemente appeals to retirees, or those looking forward to retiring.

Richard and Marlis Cram, a 50-ish couple, moved to San Clemente from La Habra Heights last June.

“My husband is getting ready to retire and slow down,” Marlis Cram said. He is a mechanical engineer who runs a consulting business from home. “We were ready to do something different. In La Habra, we lived in an area with one-acre zoning. We had lots of trees and land, and we were getting tired of taking care of an acre. We had put in lots of plants and a grass tennis court.

“We originally bought a lot at Lake Arrowhead, and we even drew up plans. But the more time we spent there, we thought it was too far from Los Angeles, from the theaters and South Coast Plaza. Arrowhead is 85 or 90 miles out. Now we’re only 20 miles away.”

The Crams spent about $500,000 for their modern hilltop house east of the freeway, with expanses of glass that scoop in miles of coastline views.

“We certainly got a much better buy than we would have in Laguna,” Marlis Cram said. “Anything comparable in Laguna would have been at least $600,000, but there wasn’t anything we wanted.”

The Crams used to race sailboats, and still love the ocean. They have a windsurfing board, and hope to use it in San Clemente. They play tennis, and San Clemente has plenty of public and private courts.

“We’re real happy here,” said Cram. “There’s a lot of activity. I like the coast, the weather, the views. There are a lot of nice restaurants in the area, especially in San Juan Capistrano.”

Many San Clemente residents, like Peter Cavaretta, commute to work in San Diego, Orange County or Los Angeles. A recent survey done for the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce showed that as many as 16,000 folks head north each day, while 2,000 or so go south into San Diego County.

The chamber would like to build a stronger business base, but the citizenry is fiercely divided over growth. There have been several attempts to redevelop downtown, especially the area known as Pier Bowl, 68 prime acres cupped by the low sandstone bluffs behind the San Clemente Pier. So far, all have been beaten back by no-growthers.

In 1988, the city purchased Casa Romantica, a historically significant 1920s Spanish-style house near the pier, and came up with a plan to renovate the structure and develop the property around it with a hotel, condos, offices and a parking garage.

“There was a public outcry that it was too intense, out of scale,” said city planner Jim Pechouse. “The developer saw the writing on the wall and withdrew.

“So we started the proposal we’re working on now. We’ve taken some of the past planning work and are designing a new plan around that. We’d like to see mixed-use around the Casa, including a hotel and a restaurant.”

There are those who are impatient for such downtown redevelopment to move ahead.

“We need areas that will draw people into town, other than the people who already live here,” said Sally Jeisy, president of the Chamber of Commerce. “We need beautiful retail shops and restaurants like Laguna Beach has, and Dana Point, and La Jolla.

“If something is well done and beautiful, then you’re drawn to that. Instead of taking family and friends to Dana Harbor to walk and have dinner at night, we could go over to Pier Bowl. I love San Clemente, I was raised here, but it can’t stay small.”

But current redevelopment plans are facing the same sort of obstacles that earlier proposals have encountered. In September, discussion of redevelopment at a City Council meeting became a raging debate, with some people going so far as to call council members “traitors.”

“The council showed very little thought for the history and character of San Clemente,” says Dorothy Fuller, vice president of the San Clemente Historical Society, who has lived in San Clemente since 1946. “They showed no respect for the majority of people who were there who indicated they want no further development in Pier Bowl.

“I believe San Clemente is beyond its ideal density at present. Any more development will deteriorate the quality of life, because of the jumble and confusion. You won’t have the open space that gives the feeling of solace and restfulness and inspiration.”

But Fuller is not about to take off for Timbuktoo.

“I’ll never leave San Clemente,” she said. “San Clemente is heaven on earth; they’re just botching it up a little. . . .”

At a Glance Population

1991 estimate: 43,575

1980-91 change: +59.5%

Median age: 36.5 years

Annual income

Per capita: 22,135

Median household: 46,521

Household distribution

Less than $25,000: 24.5%

$25,000 - $50,000: 29.3%

$50,000 - $75,000: 21.1%

$75,000 - $150,000: 21.4%

$150,000 + 3.7%