Show Business Couple Buy Peace and Quiet for Town They Love

Marty Ingels and Shirley Jones like to call themselves the czar and czarina of Fawnskin.

The couple--he, a comedian and producer, she, an actress of television and movie fame--have been connected to the tiny mountain town on Big Bear Lake for more than 25 years. They’ve served as the co-grand marshals of the community’s annual Doo Dah Parade and own a 15-acre estate less than half a mile from the town center, or from what passes for a town center in a place with 360 inhabitants.

Now, they are trying to help the place they love by rescuing a prime piece of property from would-be developers and turning it into a downtown park.

Escrow closed last week on a nine-parcel commercial downtown lot for which Ingels and Jones paid just more than $100,000, outbidding two commercial developers. It’s not the millions that Bruce Willis and Demi Moore spent in the mid-’90s to help preserve Hailey, Idaho, but for Fawnskin, residents say, it’s a start.

“We are flabbergasted,” said Barbara Ortiz--who with her husband owns the North Shore Cafe, across the street from the property--of Jones and Ingels’ plans for the property. “They just didn’t want to have any more development in this area. It was a generous gesture on their part to prevent that.”

The property may be only half an acre--a bit more than 2,400 square yards--but, Ingels said, it’s an important slice of land, one of the last remaining commercial properties in downtown Fawnskin.

“We are seeing the world buried by progress,” Ingels said. “Shirley and I want to make a statement. If it was anywhere else, it wouldn’t matter.” He and Jones live in Encino but visit Fawnskin as often as they can.

“But the sum point is that it is in the center of town, where in 15 minutes they are going to try to figure out where they can put the 7-Elevens and hotels in downtown Fawnskin, and they will find they can’t put them in anywhere,” Ingels said. “The fact I was able to do it for so little money, that is what makes it so great. I think God was sending down some message that the big boys overlooked this spot.”

Fawnskin’s residents are facing, quite literally, an onslaught of new development and new residents.

In the next few years, the town, which is in an unincorporated area of San Bernardino County, could be transformed into a vacationer’s mecca, a carbon copy of its mountain neighbors, such as Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. The town lies on the north shore of Big Bear Lake.

A sizable property called Cluster Pines, which developers plan to populate with condominiums, recently sold for $9 million. A 75-home residential lakefront project called Moon Camp, half a mile from the center of town, is before the county Planning Commission.

And escrow is pending on two other large properties, one 73 acres, the other 30, that would be developed into houses. Residents have formed a loose-knit group called Friends of Fawnskin to oppose these projects.

But some locals are conflicted about whether the developments represent a sort of progress that the tiny town should embrace. “I am torn between everything,” said Maurice Bedard, a real estate agent who represents the sellers of the lot as well as Jones and Ingels.

Bedard lives in Big Bear Lake but works part of the time in Fawnskin. “I don’t know if I want the development or for the town to stay the same. There aren’t many places like Fawnskin left, that are that quiet, and that quaint.”

In the meantime, Jones and Ingels hope that their little parcel, which they have baptized Fawn Park, can stem part of the development tide.

“When they told me I could pick up all nine parcels for $100,000, I said, per parcel? And they said, all nine. That’s approximately what I paid,” said Ingels. “Everybody is calling us heroes, but in a couple of years, it will be worth three times that.”

The park will be open to the public, but Ingels said he and Jones have not decided whether to give the property to Fawnskin or to hold on to it.

Workers will arrive at the lot this week to begin a six-week make-over. Fencing will be erected around the property, park benches and a horseshoe pit will be installed, and climbing roses, mixed flower beds and a bluegrass lawn will be planted. The 24 Jeffrey pine trees on site will remain.

In the meantime, Ingels is discovering the ins and outs of liability insurance, zoning and brands of fencing materials. Jones says she would love to live in Fawnskin year-round, but Ingels, a self-described city boy, has taken a while to adjust to the quiet of the mountains.

“Usually,” he said, “I am terrified of going up to Fawnskin. With my hyper personality, I would wait to pass out when I got there. I am a New York Jew, and I don’t understand coyotes and bears and rat traps.”

But creating the tiny park is the latest step in the ongoing woodsy education of Marty Ingels. “This,” he said, “has energized me.”