SEAL BEACH : Paint This Tower in Conformist Hues

An offbeat paint job done on the pier-side lifeguard headquarters for a TV show nearly a decade ago is finally gone, and work continues to refurbish the building.

Painted a bright yellow with fluorescent highlights in 1986 for the filming of the short-lived TV detective show “Tequila and Bonetti,” the lifeguard building at the entrance to the Seal Beach Pier is being painted a more sedate Cape Cod blue.

The $18,000 project, which includes the refurbishing of two smaller storage buildings, nearly completes the city’s plan to bring uniformity to beach area buildings.

The rest of the city’s lifeguard towers already have been converted to the new color scheme.

And the pier-end Ruby’s Restaurant will repaint in matching colors, which restaurant manager Tom Simmons refers to as “Seal Beach blue.”

Despite the quest for beachside uniformity, a consultant’s review of the Old Town neighborhood across from the pier recommends against imposing a common design or color scheme on downtown businesses.

“The charm of our Main Street is that it isn’t all one theme,” Mayor Marilyn Bruce Hastings said. “It’s eye-catching. We like the village atmosphere, and we don’t want to change it.”

Zucker Systems, a Costa Mesa engineering firm, was hired by the city to review parking, zoning, traffic and land-use issues in the downtown area so that city leaders could draw up a Main Street specific plan.

Downtown residents want to limit the number of businesses that serve alcohol and have long complained about parking shortages.

But those surveyed by the engineering firm were divided on a proposal to add a second level to parking lots at the beach and on Eighth Street.

While residents acknowledged the need for additional parking, they also said that they feared double-decker parking lots would block the ocean view and damage the city’s small-town atmosphere.