Neighbors Ruffled by Plan of Nudist Camp to Expand : Lifestyles: Retirees fear that the desert colony, which has kept a low profile, would be hard to miss if allowed to grow.

NEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif. —  The little patch of desert didn’t look like much, unless you were Richard and Lily Perkins. To them, the dusty bit of creosote and chaparral looked like five acres of blissful, homespun retreat after a lifetime in the smoggy suburbs of Los Angeles.

“We had planned on using it for our retirement home,” said Lily Perkins, a 51-year-old clerk. “Of course, that was before we found out. I mean, I won’t want to be out there relaxing in my lawn chair--only to end up watching bodies running around.”

At issue are the country neighbors. No getting around it: The Perkins’ high desert retirement-home-to-be is next to a nudist camp.

Moreover--and this is the real sticking point for Perkins, as well as for some others in this rural ranch town 20 miles east of Barstow--it is a nudist camp with expansion plans.

Even the critics of the Silver Valley Sun Club acknowledge that the camp has broken no laws and has every right to be where it is. In fact, it has maintained such a low profile in the three years since it opened, residents say, that some in Newberry Springs still don’t know it’s there.

But if the owners have their way at a hearing today before the Development Review Committee of the San Bernardino County Planning Department, people like Perkins fear it will be hard to miss.

“When we bought our property, the neighbors were a retired couple from Downey,” Perkins said. “Now I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Nancy Sansonetti, San Bernardino County associate planner, said there is little opponents of the Silver Valley Sun Club can do to force it to move. No public hearings were required under zoning laws when the owners, Nancy and John Dulle and Walter Zadanoff, bought the club’s 15-acre property and developed five acres in 1988.

Although the club owners need a conditional-use permit to develop the remaining 10 acres with the cabins, 46 recreational vehicle spaces, pool, spa, tennis court and volleyball facilities they have proposed, Sansonetti said the club has the advantage of a pre-existing legal use and is likely to win approval.

Vicki Morris, chairwoman of the Newberry Springs Community Services District, said the farmers and ranch families in the community of 2,500 were unaware of the camp until shortly after it opened.

“Word traveled fast,” she said, “and it wasn’t long before I had a number of little local ladies calling me, carrying on something awful.”

Elaine Putnam, one of those who complained, said the Dulles soon invited her and other critics out for a tour.

“I went up as a representative of the church women of the area,” recalled Putnam, 65. “We were told there would be no nudism . . . and it started out very nice.

But then, Putnam said, she noticed a woman coming up the club house steps. “She was very portly, with a large picture straw hat, matching bag and shoes, lipstick and, well, her freckles. The woman was stark naked!”

Since then, however, Morris and others said the community has grown more tolerant of the club. And last year, when she wrote a letter on behalf of the community services district protesting the expansion, her main complaint was the extra water the new development would require.

She did ask that any new development be amply fenced.

Silver Valley is one of three nudist camps in San Bernardino County. It is fenced on one side with thick planks and on another with bamboo, and faces wilderness on the other two sides. Residents say that except on the occasional windy day when the bamboo is blown down, the nudists within are shielded from view.

Nancy Dulle, a retiree in her mid-50s, said she has managed the grounds since co-owner Zadanoff left to broaden his involvement in various organizations promoting the nudist lifestyle. The club, she said, has 125 members and receives about 1,500 visitors a year, the average age of whom is 40.

“The neighbors seem to tolerate us,” she said. “We’re pretty laid back. The loudest we get is in the summer, when we hire a live band for an occasional dance.”

But, she added, she was not surprised to hear there was some opposition to the proposed expansion.

“The general public doesn’t understand what we’re all about,” she said. “They think, ‘Oh, they’re nude! How immoral!’ But we’re really not. . . . In the (nudist) lifestyle, you aren’t hiding or showing off anything, and after a few minutes, you don’t notice (that the person is nude).”

The camp owners have sought to buy the Perkins’ five acres. But so far, the Artesia couple is as reluctant to sell as they are disappointed in their investment.

“Other people (in Newberry Springs) may not mind, but they aren’t as close to it as we are,” she said. “You plan and plan, and then something like this happens, and there’s nothing you can do about it. People need to be aware. This could happen to anyone.”