Hoping Hot Springs Are Hot Spot Again

It has been years since the warm waters of La Vida Hot Springs bubbled up unfettered from an underground source.

The gracious old hotel where generations of weekend escapees from Los Angeles once lounged is boarded up and crumbling.

But now, the site of the caressing waters that were first tapped by wayward oil drilling in 1893 has been bought by a Japanese investor with a love of mineral baths and massage. And hope springs that La Vida, which means “the life” in Spanish, may open again.

Early this month, Tokyo businessman Tadayao Hata submitted plans to Brea city officials to tear down the shell of the hotel, which was gutted by fire nine years ago.

In its place on the 36-acre site, Hata envisions a slightly larger hotel, a new pool to add to the two that sit dry at the springs, graceful wooden bridges across a gurgling creek and a new clientele seeking what the old patrons did--peace, calm and soft warm water.

If the plans are realized--and city officials say they support the multimillion-dollar project--it could mean a new life for the hot springs, which have been capped for almost a decade. The plan also could bring big changes at a cafe by the same name. It once was part of the hotel but has become a roadhouse catering to weekend motorcyclists, pool players and music lovers.

“You got to put a [motorcycle] helmet on to go there these days. I don’t know if helmets and hot springs are the best combination,” said Brea community development director Jim Cutts. “But we’d like to see the place come back. It’s a part of Brea history.”

That history dates back to the days when Native Americans lived in the region and La Vida’s warm mud seeps were a sacred spot. After the springs were discovered, La Vida drew adventurers and later bootleggers who ran a speak-easy there during Prohibition.

By the 1930s, La Vida was such a phenomenon that its water was flavored and bottled into a popular soda called Lime N’Lemon at a plant on the property. With about 30,000 gallons of water per day flowing out of the ground at more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, fancy cars of clients taking the baths lined Carbon Canyon Road on both sides of the resort for miles on weekends. Signs in Yiddish advertising the place, then owned by former boxer Archie Rosenbaum, drew thousands from Los Angeles’ burgeoning Jewish community.

“It was just beautiful in the early days. It was pristine. It was manicured. People came from everywhere,” said Jack Smith, who worked as a lifeguard at La Vida in 1960, when he was 14. “It was a very special place. But it’s sure been let go.”

The La Vida bottling plant closed its doors only three years after it opened--and four years before flavored natural waters became a beverage industry bestseller.

The springs and spa lived on, but grew shabbier with the years.

La Vida’s first life as a hot springs resort came to an end with the 1988 fire, which ended then-owner Leo Hayashi’s short-lived dream of a renaissance at the dilapidated oasis. Hayashi bought the resort in 1974 and had spoken for years of rebuilding the hotel. But money was tight, and by the time the blaze ripped though the uninsured place, only a few dozen people regularly frequented the pools of La Vida.

These days the old bridge across the creek leading to the hotel tilts into the stream choked with undergrowth. Cornstalks are growing high on the banks. The faded hotel is pocked with broken windows and trash.

What does flow these days into the isolated glen next to the abandoned hotel is a kaleidoscope of bikers and yuppies, who come for the funky charm, blues music, cold beer and down-home cooking of La Vida Cafe and Restaurant, which Hata also owns.

The restaurant was spared by the 1988 fire. And since then it has taken off in popularity.

Vrooming in on Sundays on their Harley-Davidsons, swathed in black leather, the bikers have made La Vida a lively getaway, even with the springs shuttered and dry. Stomping the dusty floors and taking their places at the pool tables next to the old flagstone fireplace, the motorcycle enthusiasts have made La Vida their own.

“I think bikers like this place for the same reason people used to come here when it was a hot springs--for the solitude,” said Patti Crawford, 49, who rode in from Anaheim on a recent Friday night on the back of her husband’s Harley.

“A lot of us come here just for that reason, to get away from too many people. It’s always been a really great place for people to get away from city life.”

If Hata has his way, the springs will finally flow again. Hata, who owns a 400-room therapeutic spa in Japan, plans to pump $3 million to $5 million into rejuvenating the hot springs and cafe.

Under his plan, the 12-room hotel would grow slightly, to 15 rooms, with a new parking lot serving it, and the spa would offer massages, facials and other beauty treatments along with the baths.

Ironically, such a transformation could strip the cafe, lined with photographs of better days, of some of the dilapidated charm that attracts its current clientele.

“We’re hoping to attract Japanese tourists, you know. The water is really very soft, very good for you,” said Hayashi, who has managed La Vida since he sold it to Hata.

“The bar is kind of a fun place to go now if you want something a little different, a little campy,” Hayashi said. “But we have a vision for the place as a really nice resort for the so-called baby boomers.”

Capped though the warm waters are, the reputation of the springs has never died. Restaurant manager Don Himes tells of travelers who still arrive with jugs, asking to fill them with La Vida Springs water. Shrugging, he said he turns them away.

Hata and Hayashi say they want to keep the cafe open and welcoming to the biker crowd that has adopted it. But they say that doesn’t preclude realizing their dream of resurrecting La Vida as the legendary spa it once was.

“They’d need to do an awful lot of work to bring it back,” Brea official Cutts said. “But the springs are still there. They’re still flowing strong.”