Casa Romantica

By G. Wayne Eggleston

Recently, the Redevelopment Agency of the city of San Clemente voted 3-2 to allow a full-scale restaurant usage at Casa Romantica.There has never been a feasibility study done to determine the success of a restaurant at this location, nor any parking or traffic studies. I oppose this plan. I have submitted a conceptual plan to turn Casa Romantica in a Cultural/Art/Wedding Center.

There have been several grass root and independent surveys done and all of them have shown that a majority of San Clemente residents desire the home of our founder, Ole Hanson, to be used as a Cultural/Art/Wedding Center. Recently, the Redevelopment Agency voted to turn Casa Romantica into a Mexican Restaurant. They did this without a parking or traffic study. There has never been a feasibility study to determine if a restaurant would ever be a success at that location.

Several candidates favor a Las Brisas style restaurant at this location, but there do not take into account that Casa Romantica is in the middle of a residential area and is not on Pacific Coast Highway. A restaurant would find it very hard to survive at this location-the fundamentals just are not there. These same candidates also state that Casa Romantica is a burden on the taxpayers, but they do not take into consideration the fact that the current tenant pays $107,000 annually, and this money has gone into the general fund and has not been used to pay off the debt or for restoration purposes.

On October 7th, the redevelopment agency(composed of city council members)reversed its earlier decision with regard to a full scale restaurant, and finally realized that the current tenant has certain rights in a redevelopment area regarding submission of proposals without outside competition. They took this action only after several concerned citizens stood up at a previous meeting and asked the agency not to leave a "legacy of Casa Romantica lawsuits to the next city council." It appears that they finally learned a valuable lesson from the previous lawsuit whereby the redevelopment agency lost over 2 million dollars against the Fisherman's Restaurant.

I have been in the forefront of the Casa Romantica issue for several years. While other candidate say what Casa Romantica should be used for, I am the only candidate to actually do something with the plan. I will resisit every effort to turn it into a restaurant, and encourage every effort to use it as a Cultural/Art/Wedding Center, with public access.