Brea’s Historic Area Falls on Hard Times

A city plan to recapture downtown Brea by having a developer refurbish a turn-of-the century hotel and re-create four historic buildings bulldozed in the 1980s has stalled--but not before the city spent more than $1.3 million on the project.

Officials had hoped to sign a contract with a developer to build Heritage Block, a proposed 1.2-acre re-creation of Brea’s old core, by June. But of hundreds of developers contacted by the city over four years, only two were interested in rehabilitating the block and owning and leasing out the buildings.

And each asked the city to pay them $1.2 million to take on the project.

Last week, the City Council rejected both proposals as too costly, after the city had spent $1.3 million to buy the land and the dilapidated Brea Hotel, built in 1910, and spent an additional $250,000 to relocate it.

Local preservationists and city officials worry that the setback will hobble plans to save the city’s heritage.

“It’s back to the drawing board. It’s a really hard, unexpected turn,” Brea Councilwoman Bev Perry said. “I’m a longtime Historical Society member, so this is a killer. This is a tough one. But we’re sort of at the end of the line with redevelopment funds. There is no more money.”

Heritage Block, planned for the northeast corner of Brea Boulevard and Ash Street, is a key piece of Brea’s 55-acre, $100-million redevelopment project, which began in 1989.

Although never envisioned by city officials as a significant revenue generator, Heritage Block was instead to be the fulfillment of a promise made to preservationists as part of negotiations to modernize Brea’s downtown.

As conceived by the city, it would incorporate low-income housing, shops and offices inside rebuilt structures that made up the very soul of old Brea.

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Along with the refurbished Brea Hotel--moved about 10 feet last year when Brea Boulevard was widened--the project was to include four other buildings built between 1900 and 1930, re-created from photographs and architectural drawings.

Among the businesses once in the buildings were La Habra Valley Bank and a beloved bar called Sam’s Place. Under the city’s plan, the original wooden facade of Sam’s Place would front one of the new structures. The other buildings would be rebuilt from scratch.

The city planned to use bricks rescued from one of the demolished buildings to pave part of a sidewalk near Heritage Block. The bricks sit today in a pile on a vacant lot.

City officials say they always expected to give the land away to the developer, but they didn’t realize until after twice going out to bid on the project just how much developers would ask to build it. Each of the developer proposals calls for a direct payment from the city of $850,000, plus $350,000 in parking and off-site improvements.

Sue Georgino, redevelopment services director for the city, called the proposals “reasonable given what we were asking developers to do,” but too much for the city to pay.

The city has already laid out more than $30 million in city funds for other parts of the redevelopment project. With the pieces still to be built more likely than Heritage Block to make money for the city, officials are reluctant to transfer funds from those projects to make the historical re-creation possible.

“The marketplace has just told us twice that it’s more expensive to do than we can afford,” said Councilwoman Lynn Daucher. “I think we’ve made a good honest effort to come through on this promise. But it just wouldn’t be fiscally responsible to pay any more for it.”

Today the Brea Hotel sits boarded up and on risers on an otherwise empty swath of land. Leaning against it, covered with tattered plastic, is the Sam’s Place facade.

“It is frustrating and it’s disappointing. This is one block that’s been very important to us,” Georgino said.

“We haven’t given up. But it looks pretty tough. This was always a tough project. Other than being publicly financed, it is very, very difficult to do this kind of work.”

Heritage Block is not the only effort by the city’s redevelopment agency to preserve the remnants of Brea’s history. In recent years, the city has refurbished an old police station and the old City Hall, both now used by nonprofit groups. And seven Craftsman and Victorian-style houses have been preserved.

But from the beginning, Brea officials have staked their redevelopment money on creating a contemporary future for the city, rather than on the past.

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Across the street from the lonely Brea Hotel, a block-long, multistory parking structure is almost complete. A shopping center with a Ralphs supermarket, Blockbuster video store and Starbucks coffeehouse is open for business. A 22-screen cinema and shopping arcade are in the works. The vast Brea Mall is nearby. Even the city’s civic center embraces the modern--it shares a high-rise with an executive hotel called Embassy Suites.

“We’re really trying to recapture this area as a return to the old main street of the earlier part of the century, but to do that we have to capture today’s marketplace,” Georgino said. “That includes modern movie theaters and the kind of retail that makes sense.”

City officials say that after two failed attempts, they don’t plan to go out to bid on Heritage Block again. Since the council vote, they have scaled back their plans--hoping to at least save the Brea Hotel. Last week, they met with Brea Historical Society members about securing money for such a project from charitable foundations.

Estimates of how much it would take to do so exceed $3.7 million, officials said.

“There have got to be people within this city who have the talent to raise the money,” said Jane O’Brien, president of the Historical Society. “If the citizens of Brea want to rebuild their past, that would be ideal. We’ve got to find a way.”

City officials defend their decision to buy the land for Heritage Block in the first place, and to move the Brea Hotel out of the way of the wider thoroughfare, saying that the dilapidated buildings that had been on that land needed to come down.

But until some angel appears, the city’s vision to remake this corner of its history is fading away.

“People are hoping that we’ll be able to make Heritage Block come true, and we’re holding our breath along with everyone else,” Perry said. “If someone’s got a money tree we’ll take it. You never know. Maybe some rich person will come in and say, I’d like to preserve historical Brea.”