Temecula May Become the Town That Lives in the Past : Attractions: A proposed $60-million complex would transform the Riverside County community into a tourist mecca. Entertainment would be offered from a changing array of 20th-Century decades.

Until now, this southern Riverside County community has best been known for its wine country, antique stores, tractor races, a huge country-western dance hall and its street-rod car shows.

On Tuesday, all that may change.

Theatrical producer Zev Bufman is offering to put Temecula on the national tourism map with a privately financed, $60-million entertainment complex that sounds like a marriage of Branson, Mo., and Disneyland’s Main Street.

Proposed to be built in Temecula’s struggling, turn-of-the-century retail district, Bufman’s Old Town Entertainment Center would feature a 2,200-seat Opera House for Broadway shows and symphonies, 900-seat and 600-seat cabarets, two virtual-reality pavilions and a 4,800-seat outdoor arena for rodeos and a revival of Buffalo Bill’s historic Wild West show.

Bufman is pinning his future on the past by banking on nostalgia.

His gimmick: Every month or so, the entertainment complex would be culturally themed to a particular decade of the 20th Century, with appropriate Broadway road show, music, costuming and newsreel footage.

Only one thing stands in the way of the project, Bufman said: an election on Tuesday for public approval. The Temecula City Council, which wholeheartedly supports Bufman’s proposal, agreed to put the project to a non-binding advisory vote to gauge public support.

Bufman pledged to abide by the results, and to walk away from the project if he doesn’t win popular support, even though he already has the City Council’s blessing.

“In a town the size of Temecula (population 37,000), it’s always better to give the people a chance to voice their preference so, two or three years from now, I won’t hear people saying, ‘You know, we never wanted this.’ I don’t want to be second-guessed on the biggest project Temecula has ever attempted.”

Virtually every organization, civic group and politician in town supports the proposal. But a small cadre of vocal opponents, who say they are worried that Temecula will never be the same, hope to prevent it all from happening.

In Bufman’s vision of changing decades, patrons could see “Grease” one month, “South Pacific” the next. One month, waitresses would wear flapper dresses; another month, miniskirts. Glenn Miller’s music would be featured one month, Elvis’ the next. Another month, another decade frozen in time.

“We’re nearing the end of the century,” Bufman said, “and this country is going to go absolutely nostalgia-crazy. I want to provide a staging place for that.”

A marketing study by Price Waterhouse indicates the attraction would generate between 1 million and 1.5 million tourists a year. Most would be day-trippers, but a hotel would be built to accommodate longer stays. The project would generate $88 million annually for the local economy and create 2,500 jobs, Price Waterhouse estimated.

The closest things in the country to such a free-admission themed entertainment complex, Bufman says, are the country-western complexes in Branson, Mo., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

While visitors could amble through various lobbies, display halls and retail outlets, and enjoy street entertainment for free, admission would be charged for theater shows.

Bufman has lined up construction-engineering giant Fluor Daniel Inc. of Irvine to build the complex on private land he is buying in the existing Old Town district, just west of Interstate 15.

Standing against him is a loose-knit group called the Temecula Old Town Advancement League, which has argued in public forums and letters to the editor in the local newspaper that the project would increase traffic, crime and air pollution. They also say they are skeptical of the glowing predictions for its success.

But city officials, citing various consultants’ reports, say Temecula has everything to gain and nothing to lose by the project.

City Manager Ron Bradley said the city already is committed to spend $11.4 million on redevelopment public works projects in the Old Town district--”with or without the (entertainment) project.”

In Bufman and Fluor Daniel, the city is confident the project can be executed. Fluor is currently ranked by Fortune magazine as the leading engineering and construction firm in the United States. Entrepreneur Bufman, who has produced more than 30 Broadway shows, has built more than a dozen performing arts centers and outdoor amphitheaters around the country, most recently the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion near San Bernardino.

Bufman said that in addition to the three live-performance stages, the complex also would feature two themed restaurants, recording studios, an annex for UC Riverside’s performing arts school and the latest in virtual-reality entertainment.

If he gets the voters’ approval, Bufman said he will have the complex completed by the summer of 1996, “and I anticipate the nostalgia period will continue for at least five years. I haven’t thought yet about what we’ll do after the year 2002.”