Costa Mesa Pitching Itself as a Real Place of Destination

Anaheim has Disneyland and the Angels. Laguna Beach has a picturesque arts community and a vibrant night life. Newport Beach has wealth and the Wedge, and Costa Mesa has . . . Costa Mesa has . . .

Well, it might not have a major theme park or the glitz and cache of some Orange County cities, but in a major push to lure more tourists to the city, Costa Mesa is touting itself as a destination.

In ads that range from warm to witty--some dissed Seattle and Portland last winter as “Sunshine Impaired” in a campaign to point out to Northwesterners how much drier and warmer Costa Mesa is--the city is aggressively trying to persuade outsiders of the charms of central Orange County.

Last summer, Costa Mesa targeted broiling Phoenix with beat-the-heat ads; in March the council took out an ad in Variety inviting the Academy Awards to make its home at the Performing Arts Center.

“Our tag line is it’s a multi-fascinating place,” said Debra Vasswani of the tourism and promotion council. The city typically has about 400,000 overnight visitors annually and is hoping to significantly increase that number. “We want people in L.A. or Santa Barbara who want to get away for a couple of days to say, ‘Hey I think I’ll go to Costa Mesa.’ ”

The message might not have gotten through yet.

“Costa Mesa actually has a visitors bureau?” was the surprised inquiry from Cathy Janega-Dykes, sales director at the Santa Barbara Conference and Visitor’s Bureau, a well-oiled machine that annually lures 7 million people from around the world.

But Janega-Dykes said Costa Mesa actually is marketable, with its gigantic South Coast Plaza shopping mall and award-winning South Coast Repertory Theater.

“It’s a wonderful location, because when I look at Costa Mesa I think of Newport Beach and the whole area as part of it,” she said. “And the shopping really is great. Whenever I’m in Orange County, I definitely hit the South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island.”

Plans for the campaign began about two years ago, but the effort began to steamroll in the past year, said John Gilbert, vice president of the council and general manager of the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel.

Costa Mesa already has much to offer, he said, and the council’s job it to let the world know about it.

“Costa Mesa is a destination that’s been forgotten about in the big scheme of Orange County, and our goal is to bring it the awareness that it deserves,” Gilbert said.

How well the effort is working is hard to measure, Gilbert said, but calls to the tourism council’s information line have increased in the last few months.

The latest advertising effort, begun in June, is a series of spots on the KABC morning drive show.

Each week someone wins one weekend night in a hotel in Costa Mesa, and for Father’s Day the tourism council did a promotion awarding a $3,000 weekend in the city for two.

A 12-year-old boy from Sierra Madre, who called in with touching comments about the single father raising him, won them a weekend at the Westin South Coast Plaza, free meals at local restaurants and a $1,000 shopping spree at the mall by the same name.

Father Clint Jacobs and son Josh never had been to Costa Mesa--”Well, we never really had any reason to go before,” Clint said. But son and father had a blast.

Josh had the biggest cheeseburger of his life at Allie’s American Grille in the Marriott Suites Costa Mesa hotel, and the two split a giant pile of onion rings. They stayed in the Westin’s presidential suite and Clint had a bed with a canopy.

“We went up to our room and opened the door and said ‘Yes!’ ” Josh said.

At night they ordered movies and chowed down on candy and Cokes. At the mall Josh bought presents for his mom and stepfather, and Clint got Josh Nintendo cassettes and clothes, and then some things for the car. Then they repeated the glorious relaxation of the night before in their suite.

“We hated to go home,” Clint said. “But the way they’re promoting it in those ads on KABC is just right--it’s a great place to relax. It’s like a get-away within a get-away.”