New Year, New City : Dana Point Sets Sail on Independent Tack : County’s 28th Municipality Starts With a Bang, Faces the Chore of Uniting Disparate Elements

Blessed by a harbor, beaches and world-class hotels, all that Dana Point needed was a sense of community to tie it all together.

As of Sunday, Dana Point lacked for nothing as it officially became the county’s 28th city.

During a brief ceremony aboard a replica of the brig Pilgrim (the first Pilgrim carried 19th-Century author and city namesake Richard Henry Dana Jr. to what he would later call “the only romantic spot in California”) Dana Point’s five-member City Council was sworn in Sunday.

In one of the council’s first official acts, Councilwoman Judy Curreri was voted temporary mayor by her colleagues.

A cannon blast--actually, a 12-gauge shotgun blank--marked the birth of the municipality as 100 people aboard the square-rigged Pilgrim winced at the roar. A fire engine-red Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol boat chugged up the Dana Point Harbor channel toward the ship moored at Dana Cove Park, its sirens wailing and five jets of water spraying high.

“I think it’ll be a great coastal city,” said Ingrid McGuire, newly sworn in as the city’s temporary mayor pro-tem. “I think it’s a marvelous omen today that the sun is shining. Even the elements are smiling on Dana Point.”

Now, the city will get down to the giddy business of collecting millions of dollars in hotel bed-tax revenue and making sure that its 26,000 residents have enough essential services. A consultant has determined that the city’s first-year revenue would be about $9 million--$2 million more than needed to provide services at the level they are now under county auspices.

The new council will have some nettlesome problems in governing a community so diverse that transient day laborers sleep in fields within view of $250-a-night hotel rooms. But nearly everyone in Dana Point is optimistic, given that it is entering cityhood as one of the more prosperous new municipalities in California.

“I see this as probably the greatest city in the United States,” Lynn Dawson, a member of the Dana Point Task Force for Incorporation, said last week. “We’ve got harbors, hotels, beaches and sun nearly every day of the year. I mean, what else can you want?”

On Sunday, council members Bill Bamattre, Mike Eggers, Eileen Krause, Curreri and McGuire conducted their first act of business by adopting a 2-inch-thick set of county ordinances and regulations--a routine procedure until the city adopts its own laws.

Standing on the Pilgrim II’s deck with hands raised, the council members were sworn in by County Clerk Gary L. Granville. Newspaperman Dana sailed on the original brig Pilgrim in 1834-36 and published “Two Years Before the Mast,” based on those experiences, in 1840.

The council will select a mayor and mayor pro-tem Wednesday and participate in a ceremonial inauguration at the Dana Point Resort. Fifth District County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley is to administer the oath of office. The public is invited to the free event, at which hors d’oeuvres will be offered.

The council will eventually have to adopt a general plan and hire a city staff. For now, the city has hired former Anaheim City Manager William O. Talley as its city manager and former Rep. Jerry M. Patterson (D-Garden Grove) as its city attorney.

The city hall now consists of a trailer at the construction site of an office building, where the city has leased space. The city plans to build a civic center within 3 years.

“I don’t know that I’m nervous,” Curreri said last week. “But I am excited and glad that we’re finally at the point that we can take action.”

Getting there has been a long and troublesome journey for Dana Point.

Citizens who first tried to incorporate in 1961 couldn’t even get enough signatures on their petitions to qualify for a hearing before the County Board of Supervisors, according to Dana Point historian Doris Walker.

Twice more during the next decade, residents tried to incorporate but were turned down by the county for, among other things, not having a strong enough economic base, Walker said. During that period, Dana Point was little more than a sleepy backwater, halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

But by the 1980s, the Dana Point Harbor had been built for yachts, the Ritz-Carlton and Dana Point Resort hotels had opened and the community was beginning to rival other county coastal cities for the lucrative tourist trade.

In the spring of 1987, Dana Point decided to try again for cityhood. Curreri lead a group of residents to the County Local Agency Formation Commission with a plan to incorporate just a 3-square-mile area known as Old Dana Point.

LAFCO later added 1.5-mile-square Capistrano Beach and--in a move that outraged adjoining Laguna Niguel--a 1.5-mile-square coastal strip that includes the 393-room Ritz-Carlton and the planned 1,126-room Monarch Beach resort. The two resorts are expected to account for nearly $10 million in hotel bed taxes--a major reason Laguna Niguel laid claim to the same strip.

Laguna Niguel’s claim, however, has been rejected by both the county and by a Superior Court judge. Laguna Niguel is appealing further.

With Dana Point’s incorporation boundaries finally set, an election was held June 7 in which three-quarters of voters approved cityhood.

The cityhood outcome pleased nearly everyone in the community, as it finally freed residents from having to deal with county bureaucrats in faraway Santa Ana for such matters as street improvements.

“The reason people wanted cityhood was to have accessibility to the decision-makers,” Curreri said.

Stan Cummings, director of the Orange County Marine Institute at Dana Cove Park, said the incorporation finally gives him the sense of identity that he had while growing up in a close-knit New England town.

“I really feel that we now have a city which controls a certain amount of its own destiny,” said Cummings, who will be master of ceremonies for Wednesday’s inauguration festivities. “The people running it will be people you see on the street every day and who are friends and neighbors.”

The self-governing process actually began before Sunday.

Traffic, Parking, Renewal

Dana Point’s City Council-elect met on several occasions in recent months to hear what residents want from their new city. They have cited traffic congestion, parking shortages and the need to upgrade older areas.

It will take time for the city to organize, but Eggers and some other council members believe they can alleviate traffic congestion quickly.

One major bottleneck, Eggers said, is at the intersection of Coast Highway and Del Obispo Street, where afternoon commute traffic often backs up more than a mile. Eggers said the city may press the California Department of Transportation to widen Coast Highway by restriping the lanes.

The city may also try to speed up the planned extension across San Juan Creek of Stonehill Drive, Eggers added, which would give motorists a second artery for getting to Old Dana Point from Capistrano Beach. That extension project is financed jointly by state and local agencies, so he said the city can help facilitate the work by making sure its share of the money is allocated swiftly.

Conversely, some merchants are concerned that a recent rerouting of Coast Highway traffic so one-way northbound and southbound lanes are separated by a large chunk of the city’s main business district causes traffic to whiz by too fast for many potential customers to safely stop, Curreri said. She wants the city to install lights on both one-way corridors to slow traffic down.

The city will also need to spend untold money repairing and maintaining roads in older parts of the city, City Manager Talley said.

One of his first orders of business will be to study which roads need attention, Talley said.

Eggers said the council will get involved in Dana Point’s economic development. “You can’t have a healthy city if you don’t have a healthy business community,” he said.

Eggers would like the city to establish an economic development committee to take a long-term look at the city’s business needs.

Tourist Orientation Shunned

One thing Dana Point wants to avoid, he said, is seeing its business district taken over by tourist-oriented “yogurt shops and novelty items,” as he said has happened in Laguna Beach.

Instead, he said, the city needs to bill itself as a “destination resort” that will not only have businesses catering to tourists but also to residents.

Ed Conway, a local Realtor and past president of the Dana Point Chamber of Commerce, said business is growing in the city. Membership in the local Chamber of Commerce, he said, grew from 400 in 1986 to 600 in 1988. Conway added that a 2-year boom in local real estate has pushed property values to unprecedented levels. A three-bedroom home worth $150,000 in 1986 now fetches up to $300,000.

But the economic picture is not so bright for everybody in the new city.

In Capistrano Beach, for example, transients are known to be camping under bridges and in fields, while Latino laborers congregate in large numbers along Doheny Park Road in search of temporary work. Capistrano Beach merchants have complained about the laborers, as well as about run-down housing along Doheny Park Road.

Big Contrasts in 3 Areas

With pockets of poverty on one side of town and fabulous wealth on another--homes in the Monarch Beach coastal strip on the north side of the city run into the millions of dollars--the Dana Point council will face a challenge in meeting the needs of all residents.

But the council may be ill-equipped to do that, as two of the council members live in the Monarch Beach strip and the other three live in Old Dana Point, said Peg Maynard, leader of a citizens’ watchdog group calling itself the Coastal Organization Group.

There is no one, she said, to watch out for the interests of Capistrano Beach, where 7,000 city residents live.

Maynard, who along with many other members of the group ran unsuccessfully for the Dana Point council, said the city should have its council members elected by district to ensure fair representation.

But Curreri argued that districting “tends to narrow people’s focus and tends to encourage political deal-making. I would rather have five people concerned equally about the whole area.”

Times staff writer Lonn Johnston contributed to this story.

DANA POINT: AT A GLANCE

Named after: Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the classic American seafaring tale, “Two Years Before the Mast” (1840)

Location: On the coast midway between Los Angeles and San Diego (60 miles from each) Transportation: Auto via Interstate 5 or Pacific Coast Highway, Amtrak from San Juan Capistrano Depot, air out of John Wayne Airport (35 miles away), bus via Greyhound and Orange County Transit

Incorporated: Jan. 3, 1989 (Orange County’s 28th and newest city)

Population: 26,000

Registered voters: 15,572

Area: 6 square miles

Elevation: Sea level to 350 feet

Average rainfall: 10 inches per year

Median family income: $39,000

Major employers: Hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, real estate, offices, school district and Capistrano-by-the-Sea Hospital

Number of businesses: 1,500

Lodging: 10 existing hotels (1,155 rooms and suites), 5 proposed hotels (1,399 rooms and suites)

Landmarks: Richard Henry Dana statue on Harbor Island, the tall ship Pilgrim, Orange County Marine Institute, Harbor View gazebo, Harbor Pier, Doheny State Beach, Lantern Bay Park and Heritage Park DANA POINT’S FIRST CITY COUNCIL

Bill Bamattre Occupation: Los Angeles Fire Department captain. Age: 36 Residence: 6-year Dana Point resident.

Judy Curreri Occupation: nurse. Age: 46. Residence: 13-year Dana Point resident.

Mike Eggers Occupation: Businessman and congressional aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad). Age: 40. Residence: 16-year Dana Point resident.

Eileen Krause Occupation: Owner of an air pollution control company. Age: 45. Residence: 21-year Laguna Niguel resident.

Ingrid McGuire Occupation: Member of the board of directors of the South Coast Water District. Age: 57 Residence: Nine-year Laguna Niguel resident. CHRONOLOGY OF DANA POINT CITYHOOD

May 1961-Incorporation movement halted due to lack of signatures on petition to qualify for hearing before Orange County Board of Supervisors.

August 1966-The Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) starts work on new petition for incorporating Dana Point and Capistrano Beach.

June 1967-Petition approved by LAFCO, but boundary maps were declared invalid and petitions were ruled invalid.

September 1980-Fear of more annexation by neighboring cities prompted Dana Point to devise its Specific Plan, which eventually outlined plans for development to create the community’s image as a “marine village.”

December 1986-Dana Point Citizens for Incorporation collect enough signatures to submit cityhood application application to LAFCO.

March 1987-LAFCO hears Laguna Niguel’s incorporation petition and town dispute arises concerning boundaries.

November 1987-Voters along the Niguel beaches inland to Camino Del Avion chose Dana Point over Laguna Niguel in a LAFCO-proposed election.

December 1987-LAFCO votes 3 to 0 vote to include the Laguna Niguel coast within the boundaries of the Dana Point city plan.

January 1988-Suit filed by Laguna Niguel against LAFCO to regain their coastal strip.

June 1988-Dana Point votes overwhelmingly to approve incorporation as the city of Dana Point effective Jan. 1, 1989.

January 1989-Dana Point becomes Orange County’s 28th City.