A landslide in south Orange County has left an historic Spanish-style home and cultural center on the very brink of a cliff.
Casa Romantica was built high atop a bluff overlooking the San Clemente pier nearly 100 years ago and during this century has hosted countless weddings and educational and cultural events. Its executive director, Amy Behrens, stood near the breach as she recalled the first sign something was amiss before the ground slid about 20 feet Thursday of last week.
"We started seeing cracks on the morning of April 17 on our ocean terrace and notified the city," she said.
The city of San Clemente owns the property and the nonprofit Casa Romantica operates the venue, which was home to the city’s co-founder, Ole Hanson. He planned the town on what was then a remote 5-mile stretch of coastline in the 1920s.
Its winding array of streets were carved out as his Spanish Colonial Revival home was built. Just a few years later, Hanson lost the house to foreclosure when the Great Depression hit. Its last private owner sold it to the city’s redevelopment agency in 1989 and it was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1991.
Just a few feet from the landslide, San Clemente City Councilmember Victor Cabral stood next to an El Camino Real bell that was rescued from the building’s back terrace before it collapsed, leaving broken concrete pieces tilted toward the ocean below. He's been consulting with engineers about next steps.
"The land is still moving, and we’ve put in some equipment to monitor the movement,” he said. “So, until it finally settles there’s not a lot of people that we can put down there. It’s too dangerous.”
The slide occurred just two days after the city council had moved forward with plans to shore up the bluff. Cabral said the city is looking at all possibilities for funding the repair work, noting that it is insured for some of the damage and has commitments from the state for help.
In the meantime, he says “we have engineers here every day looking at the problem, trying to evaluate and give us the best recommendations about how we go about remediating the problem.” The building has been yellow-tagged and the city is working towards re-opening a portion of the building that hasn’t been affected by the landslide.
Behrens has had to cancel the venue’s weddings and other events, such as a five-day Celtic festival, but seemed most dismayed about postponing school field trips.
“Third- and fourth graders here in Orange County come to Casa Romantica every spring to learn about the history of San Clemente and Southern California,” she said. “And so we just dearly hope that our community will be thinking of it and wanting to preserve this part of our cultural heritage. It’s very precious to us.”
Down the hill, on the train platform at the pier, a young man was trying to buy a train ticket. There was no signage at the kiosk indicating rail service was suspended through San Clemente.
I broke the bad news to 20-year-old Richard Orozco, who had only his skateboard for transportation and needed to get to Oceanside.
"Well, now it's back to the skate shop,” he said with a smile. He was grateful to learn the tracks were closed before he had bought a ticket and waited an hour or two for a train that wouldn’t be arriving. “That would’ve been a waste of time and a waste of money.”
The landslide stopped just an arm's length from the tracks. It halted passenger service that had only been fully restored days earlier, following emergency repairs a couple of miles to the south where the tracks were subsiding.
Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner service is affected between Irvine and Oceanside. Metrolink says its weekday service will only operate as far south as the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Station, while weekend service will end in San Juan Capistrano until further notice.
