200-Year-Old Community Grapples With Trendiness

Underneath a mulberry tree near the oldest street in California’s oldest neighborhood, Bill Hardy stopped to consider the charm of his surroundings.

“It’s a little piece of history and country in the middle of the city,” said Hardy, 77, who has owned a home and workshop in San Juan Capistrano’s Los Rios Historic District for 20 years. “I run into people all the time, some who have lived in San Juan for 20 or 30 years, who come down here just to ooh and aah.”

From Hardy’s gravel driveway, through the jacaranda and pepper trees, a visitor can see the church tower of Mission San Juan Capistrano, the settlement that spawned the Los Rios community back in 1776. Just around the corner are the historic Montanez and Rios adobes, two of the original 40 adobe homes in the three-block neighborhood.

But in recent months, newcomers have been drawing much of the attention. A restaurant has opened on Los Rios Street, a gift shop now sits along the railroad tracks near the 100-year-old Capistrano Depot and a local family plans to move a historic Victorian home into the neighborhood and convert another old board-and-batten structure into a teahouse.

Is San Juan Capistrano stretching the delicate balance between charm and commercialism in Los Rios? Some here are concerned that may be happening.

“It’s blatant over-commercialization,” said Steve Rios, an attorney whose ancestor, Feliciano Rios, was a Spanish soldier who helped Father Junipero Serra found the mission.

“You just can’t believe the crowds we have on our street on the weekends,” Rios said. “There are cars all over the place and nowhere to park. You just wait, someone is going to get hit and hurt, and I’ll be glad to represent them.”

Rios and others in Los Rios are proud of their neighborhood and welcome visitors, but there is a concern that too much commercial growth has come without proper planning.

“I fell in love with this place when I first saw it, just like everybody does,” said David Whittington, 50, an artist who works as a curator at the Montanez adobe. “There is a certain spirit here. But we don’t want to turn it into an Old Town San Diego. Not that that’s bad, but this is a residential neighborhood where people live, and we want to keep that flavor forever.”

Some, including Los Rios resident Jeff Vasquez, a former city councilman, believe the commercial development has helped save the neighborhood. It was always envisioned that small businesses would revitalize Los Rios, he said.

“I think it has been a nice marriage between the commercial interests of this town and the historic preservation of the neighborhood,” said Vasquez, who lives with his family in a restored Los Rios home that also serves as his video and photographic studio.

“Yes, we are concerned about the traffic and the use of alcohol and how busy the street gets,” he said. “But it’s still a welcome change to see the places fixed up and people coming down here. In many cases, it really was an eyesore.”

The neighborhood, which in 1983 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, grew up as the home of Native Americans who worked at the mission, according to local records. The adobe homes were arranged in five or six neat blocks and surrounded by rows of vineyards planted by the mission priests.

Some records suggest the homes were constructed in 1794, but it is difficult to tell exactly, said Pamela Gibson, a member of an old San Juan Capistrano family who is now city manager of Sonoma in Northern California.

“We can’t document anything before the mission,” said Gibson, who has written two books on the history of San Juan Capistrano. “We have said that Los Rios is the oldest continuously lived-in neighborhood in California. Most of the other old residential neighborhoods have tended to be gobbled up by urbanization, which is where Los Rios seems to be headed.”

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San Juan Capistrano almost lost Los Rios in the early 1970s when an adjacent condominium complex nearly made the neighborhood its fourth phase. But a local uproar ultimately led to the Los Rios Precise Plan in 1976, which included stringent rules for its preservation.

Today, Los Rios Street--originally called Calle Occidental, meaning West Street and indicating it was situated west of the mission walls--looks more like it did near the turn of the century, according to Gibson. Except for the three remaining adobes, most of the homes are made of wood and were built in the late 1800s--homes such as the Lupe Combs House, which sits at the intersection of Los Rios and Verdugo streets and is now a gift shop called Moonrose.

The city has always allowed commercial businesses in the neighborhood, but with the stipulation that the owners live on the premises. Moonrose was the first shop permitted to vary from the old rule, basically because the City Council wanted to save the old 500-square-foot Combs house, which is directly alongside the tracks, Mayor Dave Swerdlin said.

“When you have a home right on the tracks and 28 or 30 trains going by every day, it’s not my intention to have government tell someone they have to live there,” Swerdlin said.

Swerdlin hastened to add that the City Council is well aware of the intrinsic value of Los Rios and will make sure “commercialization in this historic residential area doesn’t destroy the goose that lays the golden egg.

“We want to be very careful to maintain the neighborhood aspect; that’s one of the main attractions of Los Rios. It is not only a place that is living history, but it’s still a great place to raise a family in a unique setting.”

But the council added to some of the residents’ fears by allowing the now-defunct Decorative Arts Center into a refurbished old home without a live-in resident. And perhaps because of the success of the first restaurant, the Ramos House Cafe, a local entrepreneur has won approval to refurbish and add 750 square feet to another old home, called the Rodman House, to make it into a teahouse.

Ken Friess, a local contractor and former mayor, said the development may have come faster than city officials expected.

“Frankly, the commercial development on Los Rios has gone further than any of us thought it would,” said Friess, who helped write the Los Rios plan. “I don’t know that it’s bad, but the problem is there hasn’t been very good planning to deal with it as it has been allowed to occur.”

While city officials say the extension of two roads in the neighborhood will eventually allow better access, Friess offered another idea: Keep visitors’ cars out of the area altogether and make them park downtown, just across the railroad tracks.

Other Los Rios residents would like the city to take a further step. People like Francie Kennedy, a Los Rios resident since 1982, want to see the city write a new plan for the area and then stick with it.

“We’d like the city to state clearly what their goal is here, and then not make exceptions,” Kennedy said. “If they want to make it commercial, then say so. I’m all for good business, but there is a place for it right across the tracks, in downtown San Juan Capistrano.”