Storied Roadhouse May Be Coming to the End of Its Road

It may be the clearest sign yet of the changes brewing on Orange County’s rural edge: Cook’s Corner is for sale.

The storied biker bar and greasy spoon at the doorstep of the Cleveland National Forest was placed on the market last week, in the wake of a series of county approvals for tract homes and a mini mall nearby.

The price is $2.9 million, said Scott Hauck of Landmark Real Estate of Mission Viejo, who is handling the sale. Owner Frank DeLuna could not be reached for comment. Hauck said that the development projects were a factor in the sale, but also that DeLuna wanted to move on from the busy bar and restaurant business.

Local activists, longtime customers and real estate agents all said the sale was a sure sign of encroaching suburbia in a county bursting at the seams.

“It’s in the path of progress,” said Ian Brown, senior vice president of the Newport Beach office of Grubb & Ellis, a national real estate firm. “There’s residential [development] coming in, it’s a very desirable piece of property because ... it’s at an intersection of a main road and it’s a corner.”

Cook’s Corner sits at Live Oak Canyon and Santiago Canyon roads, in the canyons of the Santa Ana Mountains.

“Coming after the Saddle Crest-Saddle Creek project, it’s a sign that the canyons are up for sale to the highest bidder,” said Ray Chandos, a longtime area resident.

Last month, despite pleas from nearby residents, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved the Saddle Creek and Saddle Crest projects, which will bring 162 luxury homes to the foothills behind Cook’s Corner and require razing nearly 500 mature live oaks. In November, after 24 years of disputes and lawsuits, the board approved construction of 283 homes at Saddleback Meadows on El Toro Road, about a quarter-mile away. In December 2000, a state appellate court upheld a 1997 vote by the supervisors approving a gas station, strip mall and homes across from the historic roadhouse.

Cook’s Corner was named after Andrew Cook, who acquired it in a land swap in 1883. His son Earl Jack “E.J.” Cook decided the day after Prohibition ended in 1933 that a tiny hamburger joint he owned on the spot should be a bar. He got a liquor license, threw a rope over a limb and hung a keg of beer. Over the ensuing 70 years, thousands of weekend warrior motorcyclists, Marines from Camp Pendleton and others have done time at the rustic bar.

Hauck said he is sure that a buyer would preserve the bar and restaurant, which are very profitable.

“Most anybody who bought it would be foolish not to keep it,” he said. “They’re not going to scrape it down and put in some strip mall.”

Both Chandos and Brown said that to make a profit, a buyer would have to seek sweeping amendments to the zoning, which allows for 19,000 square-feet of development on the 12.25-acre site and restricts it to a home improvement or hardware store, restaurant or utility business.

Asked what would be profitable under current zoning, Brown said: “Let’s say you knock down the whole caboodle ... you could still only put in a Starbucks and a chain restaurant.” Brown said it would not be profitable to keep it open as a country bar or restaurant.

He said that with such a small building site, a realistic price would be about $1.5 million. DeLuna bought the property in 1988 for $1.3 million.

“We’ve got a Starbucks on every corner, said Jeff Heinlein, 39, a lifelong Orange County resident. “What we won’t have is someplace where we can go be ourselves.”

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Times staff writer Don Tormey contributed to this report.