OUR LAGUNA: Cape May is Laguna’s ‘baby sister’ city

Concert Band founder Carol ReynoldsCarol Reynolds, who also owns a home in Cape May, N.J., has long touted the picturesque right-coast seaside resort town as a perfect sister city to Laguna Beach.

Maybe a baby sister.

The population is only 4,000 — and half them are said to flee to Florida for the winter.

While the city is smaller and older — by about 250 years, there are some striking similarities, even though the scale and timing might be different.

When vaqueros were herding cattle on Spanish land grants, Laguna was building hotels for tourists, but Cape May is said to be the oldest seaside resort town in the country.

And development is an issue in both towns.

Cape May residents are bitterly divided on the design and funding for the remodeling of a Convention Center.

Can anyone say Aliso Creek? The controversy was especially interesting to City Councilwoman Elizabeth Pearson, a recent guest of Reynolds.

Two years of hearings on the project were not well-attended, according to Kathleen Wyatt, president of the Cape May Taxpayers Assn.

“Then the public complained they were not included,” Wyatt said.

And where have we heard that before?

Pearson also investigated sister-cityhood possibilities.

Parking is a premium in the summer. The residents don’t have parking stickers, but there are not a lot of meters in residential areas. Martha Anderson, who visited Reynolds, scrambled to find quarters in her purse, a lost art in Laguna.

Like Laguna, Cape May has a five-member council and a city manager to carry out the policies.

There are city commissions for tourism, historic preservation and shade trees — by the way what ever happened to Laguna’s Tree Board?

Cape May and Laguna also have experienced some of the same disasters. Fire swept through Cape May in 1878, destroying homes. Laguna can certainly empathize with that.

On March 7, 1962, the ocean inundated Cape May and destroyed water frontage structures and the boardwalk along the beach front. Laguna has been there and done that. How many times was the wooden Main Beach Boardwalk been wiped out before the design was changed to allow waves to flow under it? Cape May, however replaced its boardwalk with concrete.

Cape May has been called one of the country’s best small art towns. Well, there’s a match. Its restaurants attract crowds, and it is a bird sanctuary.

Laguna had the El Toro Marine Air Base. Cape May has the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center.

While Cape May is the one of the country’s largest fishing ports, tourism is a vital component of the city’s economy — just as it is in Laguna.

There are 68 bed and breakfasts, and 38 hotels and motels in Cape May, according to Terry Stickler in the city’s licensing department. Every one of them is needed to shelter the estimated 40,000 visitors in the summer.

Designated as a National Historic Landmark City in 1976, Cape May boasts 600 Victorian era homes and hotels. New or remodeled structures in the historic district are reviewed for exterior conformity to the Victorian style.

Cape May, like Laguna, had a problem with its water supply. Laguna Beach County Water District General Manager Renae Hinchey was amazed to learn the tiny city has its own desalinization plant, which was constructed when the tap water turned brackish.

Cape May obtained grants to build the plant, but the electricity needed to run it comes to between $40,000 and $50,000 a month. Residents are billed by usage.

Told by one resident that Cape May’s water rate is extremely high, Hinchey replied: “But you have water.”’ Another resident told Hinchey that she collects rain water in barrels to reduce the cost.

Laguna, which imports all of its water, is facing cutbacks by suppliers and increased rates — to be discussed at a public meeting Oct. 28.

“I didn’t know the water was desalinized and it tasted just fine,” Laguna Beach Planning Commissioner Anne Johnson said.

Hinchey, Johnson and Laguna Beach Woman’s Club board member Peggy Ford sandwiched a visit with Reynolds between tours of Philadelphia and Boston.

Johnson also took a long look at the pedestrian mall, in the middle of Cape May, created in 1969 — a prototype for the proposal to eliminate vehicle traffic on Forest Avenue from South Coast Highway to Glenneyre Street. It is a gracious brick promenade with little shops and restaurants and a church, but no Big Box stores.

“There was terrible taxpayer angst about the mall,” Wyatt said.

A Business Improvement District, funded by the shops and restaurant on either side of the bricked thoroughfare, pays for the cleaning and maintenance of the mall.

Patti Jo Kiraly’s pearl jewelry is carried in Whales’ Tale, a Mall store, owned by her childhood friend, Karan Packer.

Kiraly, Reynold’s daughter, is a longtime exhibitor at the Sawdust Festival. She was in Cape May last week, a stopover from a trip to Tunisia. Her daughter, Katie, came from her Pennsylvania college to visit with her mother and grandmother at the Cape May home that Reynold inherited from her family.

All the Kiralys will be back in Cape May for the annual film festival in November, which will feature “Diminished Capacity,” adapted by Sherwood Kiraly from his book by the same name.

But there are differences.

Cape May requires a badge to get onto the beach, which is fenced. Clearly New Jersey does not have a coastal commission like California’s. And the East Coast city frequently replenishes the sand on its beach. Laguna has done it, but not routinely.

Another major difference is the function of the Cape May Taxpayers Assn.

Orange County Taxpayers Assn. Chairwoman Kristine Thalman was fascinated to learn that the Cape May group acts as watchdogs and holds forums to present facts without taking a position.

Also of interest to taxpayers: both the city and school district budgets must be approved by Cape May voters. Elections are in the spring, as Laguna’s used to be before the city coordinated the local and national elections.

Cape May might lack Laguna’s quirky charm and breathtaking topography, but the pancake flatness gives a spacious look and feel to the 2.24-square-mile town that documents its history in its buildings and gardens.

The whole town is a Charm House Tour.

OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, 92652; hand-deliver to Suite 22 in the Lumberyard, 384 Forest Ave.; call (949) 494-4321, fax (949) 494-8979 or e-mail coastlinepilot@latimes.com