Ravaged by massive oil leak, it’s being restored - more or less.
Funky Hamlet Revives

Norma Meyer
Copely News Service

Like a ghost returning to haunt the town, the historic but vacant Avila Grocery has been towed back to its location on Front Street.

Eerie handwritten goodbyes - "Party On!" and "The spirit never ends!" - are still plastered on the boarded-up building, which rises among barren dirt lots that were once the village’s hub.

The market with the blue awnings, built in the early 1900s and a longtime gathering spot for locals to trade gossip, may never reopen as a general store. But it fared better than other landmarks in the tiny business district.

Here, they destroyed the town to save it.

Now, two years after Unocal Corp. began cleaning up a 400,000 gallon oil spill underneath this seaside enclave, after the cafes and biker bar and shops were bulldozed, after some of the 300 residents left their homes, after tons of contaminated soil were trucked to a dump and after the beach was dug up and replaced with new sand, Avila is ready to be rebuilt.

Only, emotionally, it’s not so easy. This is the story of a blip of a place that overnight became California’s Love Canal. The town matriarch, who used to hold court at a now-gone tavern, saw her house demolished and later died of what friends say was a broken heart.

As Avila was squeezed between an oil conglomerate and environmental lawyers, folks here warred over how to reassemble a hodgepodge hamlet they described as "funky" and "eclectic."

"The old Avila was frozen in the ’60s. It was like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, said Micheal Kidd, owner of the Inn at Avila Beach. He happily envisions the spruced-up, revamped Avila as "The new Catalina."

‘Mourning Avila Beach’

Others fume that their three-by-five block burg - which never grew, much less got repaired, because of a building moratorium and water shortage - is suddenly being hurled into the future. Along Front Street, Unocal replaced the worn sidewalk that was always awash in sand with a trendy, shiny promenade, replete with nautical-themed light posts, swaying palm trees, mosaic tile artwork, benches adorned with fake starfish, and a water fountain that simulates a tide pool.

"I am mourning Avila Beach because that monstrosity they put on Front Street is not Avila beach, said 15-year resident Susie Johnson, referring to the landscaped, Mediterranean-style promenade with yellow Cape Cod-motif restrooms. "They destroyed everything that is Avila."

Johnson, 48, was outside her 1920s-era cottage watering her snapdragons and clad in a gray sweatshirt that read, "Emphasize the Funk."

"I am so sick of hearing about the new Avila, the nouveau Avila, the upscale Avila," railed Johnson, who once worked at the defunct grocery. "It wasn’t as much a look as a feeling. That feeling’s not there."

Unocal officials say no one has ever done what they did - tear down a town, mop it up and try to reconstruct it.

After a routine soil test for a new business struck a black, oozy substance in 1989, and after numerous lawsuits were filed, Unocal conceded its underground pipes from a nearby oil tank farm may have leaked over decades.

Oil was always integral to this unincorporated San Luis Obispo County community - Avila blossomed as a company town in the early 1900s, and during World War II was a fueling station for the Pacific fleet.

Starting to Rebuild

After the massive excavation, Unocal repaved streets and sidewalks and is finishing a park with a children’s pirate ship at one end of town. And now, after completing one of the industry’s biggest cleanups and spending more than $100 million - which included settlements with agencies and individuals - Unocal will help throw a community picnic Sept. 16 to celebrate Avila’s comeback.

But three approved projects, all returning businesses which will be constructed by private developers, aren’t expected to break ground for months, and it could take years before Front Street is bustling again.

And although the community plan says the structures, which have a 25-foot height limit, shall use materials "consistent with pre-cleanup and historic Avila Beach" - stucco, painted wood and parapet roofs are encouraged, unfinished metal is banned - no one knows what will happen when Humpty Dumpty is put back together again.

Because Unocal brought so many people out, the company owns 70 percent of the land downtown, including the old grocery. Ken Smith, a Unocal executive, said the oil giant will either sell or develop the property, and is considering at least one hotel.

"Unocal has tried hard to accomplish what was asked of us, and we feel we’ve done a good job," he said.

A New Start

Indeed, some denizens say the spilled gunk was a godsend. "Best thing that happened to this town," asserted 91-year-old Evelyn Phelan, who has spent more than half her life here.

Phelan, who was on a committee of residents what oversaw Front Street’s new design, said one old structure was a firetrap and an eyesore, and "most were unsafe. They were patched up."

The oil contamination came up to Phelan’s curb line, and from her living room window, she watched the town topple. She saw the Old Custom House restaurant, built in 1927 as headquarters for customs agents, smashed to smithereens. Hard-hat workers overtook the area, and before long, some 20 businesses and 40 residences, including apartment units and trailers at a low-income park, vanished.

For two years, Phelan was overwhelmed with dirt and noise. The pile driving was so loud, it rattled her teeth and left cracks in the walls of her home. She still has 60 teddy bears packed in big plastic bags so she could grab them "in case something happened to my house."

These days, Phelan looks out at a vacant lot fenced in with orange corrugated metal, the newly-planted palms in the distance. Recently, she trimmed the rosebushes that once graced the front of the now-demolished Martin house and were the pride of the neighborhood. The roses, which don’t look so good, were transplanted into pots in front of the Avila Civic Building.

"We’re going to have the most beautiful town on the coast," Phelan said.

Kidd, the owner of the Inn, says the upgraded Avila - with its ever-sunny beach, sail boating, deep-sea fishing and golf - will be "Disneyland by the sea."

Initally, Kidd fought the excavation. His inn, a ‘60s motel that has been renovated into a quaint lodge with Mexican and Mediterranean accents, was the only business open on Front Street throughout the cleanup. Since the Inn is on a slight hill, the pollution ran down and stopped right beyond Kidd’s property line, which is now bordered with a barbed-wire-topped fence and the warning "Road Closed."

‘Chasing the Money’

Like many others, Kidd says he was compensated more than fairly by Unocal when he negotiated a settlement. Others weren’t as pleased with their financial outcomes after hooking up with three environmental law firms that swooped into town, including the firm portrayed in the Julia robbers movie "Erin Brockovich."

"We saw Erin Brockovich before she was anyone special," recalled Kidd. "Suddenly, here was this gorgeous gal in a low-cut outfit, going to all the bars," he said. "We figured out later she didn’t really want to buy everyone a drink. She was chasing the money."

Kidd’s inn looks out over the reopened, newly-sanitized beach, which on a recent day teemed with sunbathers and swimmers. Rhonda Garris, whose family dates back generations in Avila, walked up the steps from the sand and peered at the empty lots where the structures she remembered from her childhood were obliterated.

"My biggest fear is it will become another Monterey or Carmel," said Garris, 37.

Down below on the beach, Bill Price had moved beyond the ugliness, the "family feud that was a community feud" when everyone tried to redesign the town. His shop, Beachcomber Bill’s, was among the first to be turned into mulch. His wife’s store, The Sea Barn, which sold bathing suits and resort wear, was the last to go.

Both businesses are due to be among the first to return, but until they are built, the mellow Price, in trunks and T-shirt, sat under a tent on the sand, renting out boogie boards and wetsuits.

"Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes. Nothing remains quite the same," he said, quoting a Jimmy Buffet song.

"We did make the town better - let’s hope."

Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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