San Diego’s Plunge falls on hard times

Across this sunny city there are numerous public swimming pools. On the coastline, there are wide beaches where gentle waves beckon.

But there is only one Mission Beach Plunge — the indoor swimming pool across from the ocean that has been a recreation draw since 1925.

Now, after surviving recessions, earthquakes, wartime exigencies, and various social and political upheavals, the Plunge’s future is threatened by a nasty landlord-tenant dispute between the operator and city government.

The company that holds the lease is in bankruptcy and in late May the operator defiantly closed the Plunge on the eve of the summer season that brings battalions of tourists to San Diego for whom the Plunge is a required part of their holiday.

“We spend the winter talking about the zoo, Petco Park and the Mission Beach Plunge,” George Wiley, a government accountant from Iowa, said as he, his wife and two daughters read the sign that announced the Plunge closed “until further notice.”

Is the Plunge being victimized by intransigent bureaucrats at City Hall? Or is it being held hostage by a manipulative leaseholder trying a political pressure play?

It depends on who’s doing the talking.

Built by sugar baron and philanthropist John D. Spreckels, the Plunge survived the Depression and World War II (it served as a water survival course for Navy pilots) as San Diego matured and grew.

Local residents say that Johnny Weissmuller and Esther Williams did laps at the Plunge — at 60 feet by 175 feet, it was once billed as the largest saltwater pool in the world. Generations of San Diegans taught their young to swim here.

Through the years its original name — the Natatorium — was changed. The pipes that brought salt water from the ocean were replaced by fresh-water tanks.

The amusement park around it waxed and waned in popularity. In the late 1970s, transients twice tried to burn down the Giant Dipper Roller Coaster. But the Plunge, except for a period of closure, endured: too dear to the civic heart to let fail.

For the last three decades, every mayor has vowed to revive Belmont Park, particularly the Plunge. Ideas came and went — amid money problems, land-use disputes and political accusations.

City officials thought they had finally found someone to restore the park and the Plunge to its fun-loving glory when Tom Lochtefeld, a native San Diegan and entrepreneur whose properties included the Raging Waters theme park near San Dimas, bought out the Belmont Park master lease in 2002.

Indeed, at first the relationship was buoyant.

Next to the Plunge, Lochtefeld opened a Wave House, where wannabe surfers could ride artificial waves. Eateries and clothing stores catering to the beach crowd opened.

Tourists and locals alike enjoyed the Tilt-a-Whirl, Crazy Submarine, merry-go-round and other rides. An athletic club linked to the Plunge thrived.

Then city officials began to suspect that Lochtefeld was reneging on part of the deal that gave him millions of dollars in rent credits in exchange for fixing up the Plunge.

A look at the books suggested, for example, that Lochtefeld had shifted $5 million in rent credits not to rehab projects but to another entity that he owns, officials said. “He has a mini-empire,” said City Atty. Jan Goldsmith.

Lochtefeld — at news conferences and at the website https://www.savethePlunge.org — tells it differently. On the website, Lochtefeld, filmed in a wetsuit at the beach, blames the shutdown on the city.

“We had to shut the Plunge down,” he says. “It was a very, very sad day. The reason is that the structure is unsafe but the city knew that” when it agreed to his lease.

Lochtefeld says the city refused to approve his overall development plan, which included a 300-room hotel, and for that reason he refused to pay when the city increased his annual rent from $70,000 to roughly $500,000.

Goldsmith retorts that what Lochtefeld calls a development plan was merely a sketchy idea for a hotel that would probably have had a tough time getting approved by the California Coastal Commission.

The cash-strapped city is now a creditor in the bankruptcy. “We’d like to know where our $5 million went,” Goldsmith said.

In October, the city declared Lochtefeld in default of his lease, which has 20 years left.

Weeks later Lochtefeld’s company, Wave House Belmont Park LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying that the city’s refusal to accept his hotel plan, and its demand for increased rent, left him unable to pay a $17-million bank loan.

Lochtefeld says that his engineers believe the aging Plunge is unsafe. The city says its own engineers are not sure.

On June 30, in a Bankruptcy Court hearing, control of the property, in effect, shifted to the Pasadena-based East West Bank, Lochtefeld’s lender. A receiver may be appointed to sort out the financial details.

Goldsmith hopes that the bank finds a new operator sufficiently capitalized to run the Plunge and the rest of Belmont Park.

Lochtefeld’s next move is unclear. He appears to have shifted his interest to a proposal to renovate the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and to include a Wave House as one of its attractions.

Meanwhile, the Plunge remains closed.

San Diego sentimentalists fear that a beachfront icon may never recover and that a bottom-line- oriented bankruptcy receiver or a new leaseholder might decide it is not worth the money and frustration to save the aging structure.

“It’s just so sad to see those waters so quiet and still, after being the site of so much happiness in the past,” said Ken Kramer, host of the local history program, “Ken Kramer’s About San Diego.”

“The Plunge is one of those places you figure would always be there,” Kramer said, “but maybe not.”

tony.perry@latimes.com