Parks Have Worn Out the Welcome : Recreation: Once seen as neighborhood assets, they are now viewed by some in Dana Point as havens for crime and violence.

Shouts and catcalls interrupted the speakers, and as the crowd grew even angrier, Bob Wilberg became edgy.

“At one point, I thought I should shut the meeting down, but I thought I might have a riot in the audience,” recalled Wilberg, then-board president of the Capistrano Bay Park and Recreation District.

The heated debate last month did not center on a proposed jail, city dump or anything flagrantly ominous. No, these days in Dana Point, residents are haranguing elected officials that they don’t want city parks and soccer fields--the very amenities most other cities crave.

Five sites are slated for parks, and plans to develop the first two parks have drawn outcries that the recreational areas will destroy neighborhoods by bringing in traffic, congestion, noise and--as residents stated at the meeting--”outsiders” and “undesirables” in their “low-riding cars.”

Some of the protests have touched a nerve.

Carlos Olvera, a city planning commissioner, said: “Although many people express themselves in a politically correct manner, there’s a certain undertone that appears to be racial discrimination.”

Although residents flatly deny that is behind their objections, one thing is clear:

“Parks are not the warm fuzzies they used to be,” said City Councilman Mike Eggers. “The perception now is that they attract crime.”

Although an October, 1993, consultant’s study shows that Dana Point has only three acres of parkland for each 1,000 residents--a lower ratio than most neighboring cities--many homeowners have a different idea what to do with the once precious land: Sell it off.

“All government is in a fiscal crisis now,” said Bill Shepherd, president of the Lantern Village Assn., which is lobbying to stop a park in its crowded neighborhood. “I think this is a good opportunity for the city to step back and look at the bigger picture. . . . Maybe some of this land should be sold off.”

But there’s more to this than fiscal worries. People say they’re afraid.

Last fall, highly publicized problems of late-night drug dealing and crime at Dana Point’s small Shipwreck Park in the Lantern Village caused it to be closed at dusk. More frightening was the October incident at Calafia Beach County Park in San Clemente where a teen-ager died after a confrontation with another group of youths, residents said.

“How many of you want a paint roller in your child’s head?” parent Chris Daiy asked the park board. “That’s what happened over there in San Clemente. . . . I moved from that. I don’t want that here.”

Although he concedes there have been isolated problems, such anti-park and anti-soccer field sentiment amazes Lynn J. Muir, who remembers how it was only a few years ago, when the Capistrano Bay Parks and Recreation District aggressively scrounged for property within the six-square-mile city to turn into parks before it was lost to development.

The small, independent district was created in 1965 but was dissolved late last month after state budget problems left the district with little revenue. The city has now inherited the five park sites, which the now-defunct park district bought for $5 million, and will decide how to develop them.

When the old park district surveyed community residents only three years ago, “more parks were identified as the No. 1 priority,” said Muir, who served on the district’s board.

In what now seems like a distant past, parks were perceived as amenities that lured people to buy homes in local developments, knowing their children would have a place to play.

“People loved them. We never had a park nobody wanted,” Muir said.

But that was then.

Although it is happening virtually everywhere, Olvera believes this community of 33,000 people has an especially strong case of wanting things, as long as they are in someone else’s neighborhood.

“It’s NIMBY (not in my back yard), pure NIMBY,” Olvera said.

But Olvera also hears hints of something more serious when some park foes use terms like “outsiders” and “undesirables.”

“I’m very upset about it, very concerned,” said Olvera, the U.S.-born son of a Mexican immigrant. “From my viewpoint, it’s a Catch 22. We want to give the kids something to do, so they are not sitting around with time on their hands, but people don’t want them in their area.”

At the tumultuous Dec. 7 park board meeting, the subject that raised the residents’ ire was a proposed soccer field at a three-acre parcel next to their homes and San Juan Creek.

But peppered into the discussion of problems with lights, traffic and parking was a more chilling discussion about the field maybe attracting gangs to cruise into the neighborhood and threaten local children.

Wendy Lockwood-Larson, a six-year resident of the Marlborough Seaside tract near the three-acre parcel, acknowledged the sometimes nasty tone of the meeting, which she attended, but chalked it up to the heat of the moment.

“I feel very strongly my neighbors are not racists,” Lockwood-Larson said. “People are concerned about bad elements, but I think we need to be supportive of our cultural diversity and all work together.”

Another park controversy has arisen in the crowded cluster of apartments and duplexes called the Lantern Village, just behind Dana Point’s downtown, where a community center and park have been proposed for a small parcel.

Shepherd and others in the community association are convinced a park of any sort there will only add to the area’s crime problems.

“We would like to see open space, not a park that is difficult to control,” said Shepherd, 46, who lives a block and a half from the proposed park. “The solution here is to make the community a cleaner, safer place to live.”

With the old park district gone, now the decisions on what to do with the park sites fall to the city. City Manager Stephen B. Julian said he understands the difficulty, and the protests, he has inherited.

The city needs parks and ball fields, but determining what kinds of parks and where to locate them will not be an easy task, Julian said. People in the community don’t want city dollars spent on parks that simply become “a hangout spot for folks with nothing better to do but drink and carouse,” Julian said.

“I think people have a good reason to be concerned about problems in parks, but we still have to provide recreational facilities for our residents,” Julian said.

Saying No to Parks

Dana Point is more densely populated than surrounding cities but various measures of park and open space do not differ greatly:

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Dana Laguna Laguna San Point Beach Niguel Clemente Residents per acre 8.6 4.1 4.9 4.6 Park acres as % of total space 2.6% 1.7% 1.2% 1.5% Park acres/1,000 residents 3.0 4.2 2.0 3.4 Open space acres/1,000 residents 20 750 72 11

San Juan Capistrano Residents per acre 2.9 Park acres as % of total space 1.3% Park acres/1,000 residents 4.4 Open space acres/1,000 residents 124

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Source: city of Dana Point