A Fantasy Land in the Sand

Michael Mirsky, 5, sat in the sand Monday morning near the Seal Beach pier playing bulldozer with an empty juice box. A few feet away, heavy earthmovers belched smoke as they dragged tons of sand into a pile. Construction workers in hard hats watered it down with fire hoses.

Michael looked up, impressed. “It’s going to be a big kingdom,” he said.

Indeed, when it is finished this weekend, 9,000 tons of sand will be transformed into a sand castle village 75 feet wide and 25 feet high. Tourists will be able to traverse three levels of the village to see replicas of 56 famous buildings, new and old.

Designed by professional sand sculptors for the Orange County United Way Centennial, the replicas will include the Taj Mahal, the Chateau du Chambord, the Arch of St. Louis, the Bonaventure Hotel and the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The United Way sand castle contest is considered one of the best on the West Coast, said Newport Beach architect Kent Trollen, 39, who is directing the project this year. Since 1983, United Way of Orange County has used the event to start its annual fund-raising campaign.

But this year is the 100th anniversary of United Way nationally. Trollen said he and sand sculptor Kevin Crawford, who is designing the village, initially feared the centennial celebration might preclude the contest.

“We knew it would break a lot of hearts,” Trollen said.

‘The Dirty Dozen’

So, the two persuaded agency officials to sponsor a fund-raising project centered on “the most sophisticated, large sand castle project to date,” Trollen said. It will involve a dozen professional sand sculptors--known as “The Dirty Dozen”--who will supervise nearly 1,500 volunteer carvers.

It won’t be history’s largest sand sculpture (that one rose more than twice as high, 56 feet), but it may be the most intricate, said Crawford, a Los Angeles architect with John Ash Associates. It is also his first solo design, a terrace style that will allow up to 200 carvers to work on all sides at any one time.

“It’s kind of an experiment,” he said. “You don’t have to start from the top and go down.”

As a rookie in professional sand-sculpting, he knows his reputation is on the line.

“If it works, we’ll be heroes,” he said Monday, brushing sand off his blueprints. “If it doesn’t, we’ll be fools.”

Crawford, 31, said he chose buildings for the project that most people would recognize. They are not reproduced to scale because the modern buildings would dwarf the ancient ones.

One reason sand castle enthusiasts love Seal Beach is that the Santa Ana River deposits silt near the Seal Beach Pier, making the sand cohesive and ideal for building castles, Trollen said. It allows, for example, such extravagant feats as a five-foot unsupported arch made entirely of sand.

Glad to Pay Fees

Some businesses, quick to sense promotion and advertising possibilities, are glad to pay fees to the most talented of the sculptors. There are about 30 professional sand sculptors in Southern California, Crawford said. Most “professional” sculptors work in the sand part time, holding down other jobs as architects or engineers.

Trollen, a professional sand sculptor for seven years, is a principal in a sand castle design company called Sandtastic. He said he charges from $25 an hour up to make sand birthday cards as well as castles. His projects have been used in films, commercial productions and for magazine covers.

The reason an architect would want to spend his free time making more architecture is not more money, Trollen said. “It’s a people event. Sand sculpture breaks down socioeconomic barriers between people.”

It’s also romantic, he said. Spending all that time in the sand working on a grandiose project destined for destruction has turned some people into lovers, he said. There have even been marriages of sand sculptors.

“We’re all pretty sensitive,” he said.

On the other hand, among creative people feelings can get hurt--especially when credit is given out incorrectly. “You have to walk on eggshells with some people,” Crawford said. “Sand sculpting is highly political. A bunch of egomaniacs are involved.”

On occasion, he said, there has even been talk of lawsuits, but so far none has been filed.

Carving Begins Friday

Today, volunteer workers will continue to move the sand in Seal Beach, pushed back to the seawall from winter tides and storms. For the next three days, city water will be pumped through fire hoses to the site at the rate of 750 gallons a minute, 10 hours a day. The wedding cake shape will be formed by sand modules compacted with pneumatic pumps and hoisted Thursday into place with two cranes. Friday, the carving begins.

Under the supervision of the “Dirty Dozen,” the amateur participants, working in shifts of 200 at a time, expect to complete the project by 4 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets, at $1 for children and $2 for adults, will be sold for tours that begin at noon Saturday. A United Way spokeswoman said she hopes proceeds will amount to as much as $100,000 and added that the money would go directly to United Way agencies.

Free parking is available at Rockwell International (corner of Seal Beach Boulevard and Regency Drive), and free shuttle service will be available Saturday and Sunday.

The Centennial Sandcastle, which includes a replica of Independence Hall, has been named an official U.S. Constitution Bicentennial site. A sunrise event featuring astronaut Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. will take place at 5:45 a.m. Thursday at the site just north of the 8th Street parking lot.

If left to nature, the sand kingdom might last a week. But official permission--and city permits--expire before that. On Wednesday, the project will be bulldozed.