Rail Station Sparks Ideas for Renewing San Clemente Area

Turn your clocks back to springtime, 1938, and set your radio dials to bandleader Sterling Young and his orchestra playing at the casino--direct from San Clemente’s North Beach.

Around the corner, “Mad About Miami,” starring Deanna Durbin, is headlining at the old San Clemente Theater, where tickets are 35 cents, or 40 cents for the added comfort of the loge. And a block away at the ballpark, the minor league Seattle Red Sox, brought south by former Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, the founder of San Clemente, are playing pepper in spring training.

Although the North Beach area enjoyed a colorful past, a trio of old, boarded-up, Spanish-style stucco buildings sitting unattended and unwanted today along El Camino Real are testimony to its uncertain future.

But many residents and city officials believe last month’s opening of a new, $2-million Metrolink station could change that and bring a renaissance to the long-neglected area.

The new commuter terminal not only brings business people and travelers to North Beach each weekday but has sparked new interest in the potential of the area, said David N. Lund, San Clemente’s economic development director.

“It’s the gateway to the community,” said Lund. “We have to clean it up and make it attractive. We have to make people feel good about what they are driving into, no question about it.”

The Metrolink station could be the starting point for the area’s rebirth, said Bonnie McKenna, a city planner. Perhaps it could lead to a new commercial-residential plan for the 253-acre Marblehead coastal property.

“We would like to see North Beach become a hub, a place where residents and people who get off the train can go to dinner, see an art show or a movie, perhaps take their kids somewhere to play,” said McKenna, who is preparing a specific plan for the entire corridor stretching along Avenida Pico from Camino los Molinos to El Camino Real. “The idea is to encourage a North Beach revitalization.”

Any talk of renewed interest in North Beach is music to the ears of longtime San Clemente residents such as Don and Lois Divel, who remember North Beach when orchestras played the Casino--now the abandoned Sebastian’s Dinner Theater--and couples danced under the moon with a view of the Pacific Ocean, which is only steps away.

The Divels were both ushers at the San Clemente Theater, which became the Miramar Theatre and has long sat unused, under lock and key. They also were among residents who frequented the narrow, now-vacant building that used to be a popular four-lane bowling alley, where the pins were set by hand.

“There was always such high hopes for North Beach,” said Lois Divel, a member of the city’s historical society. “For those of us who remember it like it was, it’s kind of painful now.”

No one can pinpoint what caused the slow deterioration of North Beach. Some say the arrival of Interstate 5 in the late 1950s altered the importance of El Camino Real as a city gateway.

More recently, the biggest blow to the North Beach area--and a setback some say the city as a whole has not recovered from--came in the late 1980s when San Clemente lost the Nixon library to Yorba Linda.

The proposed San Clemente site for the library was on the bluffs along El Camino Real in the North Beach area.

Since then, North Beach has languished, at least until construction started on the Metrolink station last September.

Now some of the latest ideas for the rest of the area include:

* A 54-unit time-share project with a 9,000-square-foot restaurant on the street level. The project was approved several years ago for the northwest corner of the Avenida Pico-El Camino Real intersection. It has stagnated, however, because of a lack of financing.

* A Miramar remodeled to provide 550 seats for live entertainment. The idea has been studied by a consortium of South County theater groups, church groups and music promoters.

* A rehabilitated bowling alley with an 8,000-square-foot microbrewery on the second story.

* A food court and plaza with open-air seating and dining.

One of the biggest obstacles to development in the area has consistently been parking, a requirement insisted upon by the California Coastal Commission, said Dave Stolte, a commercial real estate broker who specializes in the San Clemente area.

But Stolte said those problems can be solved, particularly with the help of a city government focused on improving the area.

“I’m really excited about the future of North Beach,” Stolte said. “I’ve been working in the area for five years and I can say now I see the sunlight on the horizon.”