Crystal Cove Residents Must Bid Long Goodbye to Cherished Homes
For 20 years, Vivian Falzetti has been watching sunsets from her cottage in what is now Crystal Cove State Beach, a flower-draped patch of paradise on America’s back porch.
Soon, it’ll be your turn.
After 15 years of negotiation and confrontation, the state Parks and Recreation Department is taking over the 45 bungalows at the park’s old surfer campground and turning them into vacation rentals.
Residents like Vivian Falzetti, focus of every envious eye that ever looked down from Pacific Coast Highway, are getting the boot.
Her frontyard is a 3-mile strip of beach, part of a 2,800-acre park that stretches inland to preserve disappearing coastal sage scrub and several threatened species.
The takeover is an attempt to preserve history as well as nature. The funky old shacks, reminders of when Southern California was long on leisure, are being surrounded by tract-mansion developments.
The state Department of Parks and Recreation, which allowed residents to stay after taking over, is negotiating with a renovation firm to fix up the bungalows.
“We are going to keep it the same in spirit,” says Mike Tope, chief ranger for the district. But utilities need to be upgraded and many of the buildings need a lot of work. Some may not be saved.
No date has been set for rentals, nor have tourist rents been finalized, Tope says. But a planning summary last year suggested $100 to $400 a night.
Most of the year, Crystal Cove blooms with bougainvillea, morning glories, nasturtiums and geraniums gone wild. Scattered around is half a century’s accumulation of beach junk, from boats to bicycles.
Rush-hour traffic in Crystal Cove means extra dolphins, surfers or yachts passing on the horizon.
“They’re going to boutique it,” Falzetti says through the screenless screen door of her artist’s studio. “I don’t think anyone other than the state wants to destroy Crystal Cove.”
To Falzetti, whose etchings balance the chaos of surf and sky, “boutiquing” the cove means pretty much the same as destroying it--”turning it into Disneyland,” in other words. “I’m sure people are going to love it, but it’s going to be a great loss.”
The settlement sprang up around an old campground after the coast highway was completed between here and Newport Beach in 1926. The Irvine Co., Orange County’s giant landlord, sold tenants long-term leases during the 1930s.
The state bought the property in 1979 after the bungalows were granted federal historical protection. Jim Thobe, 71, bought the leasehold to his hilltop one-bedroom place in 1970 for $35,000.
“We’ve kept it up and fixed it up and all that stuff, and when the state takes over we don’t get a dime for it,” he says. “And yet the public thinks we have been living here freeloading off the state at taxpayer expense.”
From the settlement as a whole, the state collects more than $500,000 a year under the latest agreement. Thobe pays the government $1,400 a month, and he’s been living all these years under threat of a 30-day eviction notice.
“I’d do it again not knowing how long I’d have it, because I think this place has kept me alive through the trials and tribulations of life,” Thobe says. “It is paradise, you know.”
About a third of the cottages are still occupied, and the state continues to let the month-to-month leases run. Some go into 1998.
State parks Director Donald W. Murphy used to be a ranger at Crystal Cove, and Thobe believes the only reason residents haven’t been kicked out already is that “he has a soft spot in his heart for us.”
Public property or private, the cove has always welcomed guests, Thobe says. What hurts is that the locals aren’t welcome anymore.
Says Falzetti, “We feel like they’ve stolen our houses.”
