Just Say ‘No Growth’

There’s a ban on development, a ban on more fast-food restaurants, a ban on new liquor stores and pawnshops, and a crackdown on illicit massage parlors.

San Juan Capistrano has also turned up its nose at a proposed Wal-Mart, while a Home Depot hasn’t exactly gotten roses and the red carpet. Then there was that secret deal to build an Indian casino--the City Council went stratospheric over that one.

To outsiders and some locals, city government here may have taken just-say-no to an extreme.

“Can we say ‘elitist’?” bluntly said Steve Rios, whose family has lived in the city’s rustic Los Rios district, the oldest neighborhood in California, since the 1770s.

Something stubborn is stirring in the life of this city, one of the most unusual communities in California, home of Mission San Juan Capistrano and the legendary returning swallows.

The city of 31,000, nearing the end of its own development cycle, is ferociously defending its looks, its identity and even its borders against the encroaching outside world.

“Everyone who lives in San Juan believes it’s a special place,” said Mayor John Greiner. “It’s almost like an island in a great sea of turmoil.”

San Juan Capistrano isn’t tony like La Jolla or terminally adorable like Carmel. It is genuinely Spanish with a tincture of the Old West. Its distinctive yet uncutesified downtown has the mission, Los Rios adobes, antiques shops and restaurants visited by many of the 550,000 tourists who came to Father Serra’s mission last year.

Although it has its share of weary strip malls and cliche architecture (peach stucco with tile roofs), the city doesn’t lack for original charm or a sense of self. One councilman, David M. Swerdlin, calls his town “the jewel of Orange County.”

But the once remote and cloistered town is now surrounded by metastasizing suburban communities. San Juan Capistrano finds itself fending off what local purists regard as the corrosive influences of modern society.

Over the past year and a half, the council has:

* Passed and later extended until next May a building moratorium on large-scale projects while a General Plan review gets under way. The ban provoked a lawsuit by the building industry.

* Clamped a lid on liquor stores, check-cashing stores, bingo parlors, pawnshops and mortuaries in the downtown while the city studies whether they’re “appropriate for a small-town village atmosphere,” said city Planning Director Thomas Tomlinson.

* Temporarily banned, pending review, new drive-through fast-food eateries after a cluster of them sprang up near Interstate 5 and California 74, the city’s gateway to the vaunted downtown and the mission.

* Approved a one-year moratorium (which was lifted earlier this year) on adult-oriented businesses. None of them existed here, but the city did receive inquiries.

* Suspended, pending review, new commercial uses in the Los Rios area, where some residents and city preservationists raised alarm that the district’s character was being ruined by commercialization.

* Tightened an ordinance regulating massage parlors, some of which were suspected of offering sex.

Some actions sparked dispute, especially the growth halt, which brought the wrath of developers.

“We’re all on the same page when it comes to [maintaining] the unique community feeling,” said Christine Diemer, chief executive officer of the Orange County Chapter of the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California.

But she argues that San Juan Capistrano shouldn’t shut itself off from the rest of the county. “That’s not good for the entire economic community. . . . You can’t just pull up the drawbridge.”

To one degree or another, that’s exactly what many here seek to do.

“There has been a rabid protection of the environment,” said former councilwoman and community activist Carolyn Nash. “I mean that in a good way.”

Over the years, city officials have passed a strict limit on hillside development (you can still stand downtown, turn in a full circle and see hilltops) and nurtured a system of equestrian and hiking trails.

San Juan Capistrano is only about 4,000 people away from build-out, and officials want tight control over in-fill projects. Seeing past mistakes, they’re expressly choosy over both housing and businesses.

Getting a chilly reception, a proposed Wal-Mart was withdrawn more than a year ago while a Home Depot is in limbo because of the building moratorium, according to Greiner.

But the message has been clear: Such retail just doesn’t fit in with the city’s aesthetic and economic predilections.

“There’s a fairly strong feeling by many in this city, they don’t want big-box retail here,” the mayor said.

Instead, officials seem concerned that the city’s economic vitality isn’t sapped from the downtown, dominated by smaller enterprises.

Most of the business community supports city actions to control growth and commercial uses, according to Tom Facon, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce.

“They agree with what the city is doing,” he said. “We’ve been protected from overdevelopment”--including enterprises that would “compete with existing businesses.”

Councilman Wyatt T. Hart said, “I have a problem bringing in a major retail-wholesale place that would destroy the downtown.”

So much for attracting big outlets with bountiful sales tax revenue craved by most cities.

If the city is wary of retail, imagine the reaction when the news broke more than a year ago that the local Juaneno band of Indians had a secret agreement with Las Vegas gaming interests to bring a casino to San Juan Capistrano.

The plan depends on many things falling into place, including the Juanenos gaining federal recognition for tribal status.

Yet the stunned council reacted swiftly, censuring the casino idea.

“It doesn’t have any place here,” Greiner said. “We didn’t like what we perceived as a secretive, behind-closed-doors agreement. We were disappointed and angry.”

The Juanenos are still awaiting federal recognition, and nothing more has been heard about the casino.

Of more immediate peril, say city officials, is the growth of surrounding communities, causing heavier traffic on San Juan Capistrano’s streets and school overcrowding.

So the city has become increasingly active in the doings of its neighbors, lest San Juan Capistrano suffer the consequences of silence.

Said Greiner: “We are not shy about sending a letter to another city if something they’re doing would impact our community.”

With so little growth remaining here, and with so much actual and potential development just beyond the city limits, San Juan Capistrano has a steel sense of self-protection.

“It’s very strong here, more than any other place I’ve ever been,” said Jerry Miller, for nearly seven years the administrator of the mission. “They don’t want to change things here. It’s such a quaint, romantic town.”