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Streetscapes in the City of Avalon are different than in most communities. Located on an island off the Southern California coast, Avalon is 26 miles from the Port of Los Angeles. In this small resort town, there are more golf carts driven on the streets than cars.This unique streetscape is a perfect example of a sensitively handled restoration project that was carried out with the full participation of the residents. After purchasing Catalina Island and the sleepy town of Avalon in 1919, Chicago chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. set out to make Avalon a world-class resort destination. He began the process, and the Crescent Avenue promenade was designed and constructed in 1934 by his son Philip Wrigley and the Wrigley Company graphic designer, Otis Shepard.  The “main street” of Avalon is actually a waterfront pedestrian promenade complete with public plazas and sidewalk cafes. “I am going to leave no stone unturned to make it a refuge from worry and work for rich and poor,” said Wrigley, and that’s exactly what Avalon became. After installing a water system complete with a reservoir and sewers, William Wrigley set out to construct the famous Casino Ballroom, a golf course, the Bird Park—an aviary, which was, at the time, the greatest collection of exotic birds in the world—hotels and other facilities. When Wrigley died in 1932 the pedestrian-only waterfront promenade was the finishing touch to the creation of Avalon. “Gradually, we may be able to make all of Catalina Island a monument to the early beginnings of California,” said Phillip. Known for its Big Band music in the Casino Ballroom, swimming, sport fishing, and sightseeing, quaint Avalon was frequently visited by Hollywood movie stars and dignitaries alike and became the international attraction Wrigley had foreseen.  After the success of the initial planning process for Metropole/Crescent Intersection, the city council expanded the scope of the project to include virtually the entire downtown waterfront area. All construction had to take place in the off-season because of Avalon’s dependence on the summertime tourist economy. The general contractor for the project, Valley Crest, had to ship all materials, trucks and equipment to the island on barges. After World War II, the advent of commercial airlines and the popularity of the automobile changed Avalon. Wrigley’s famous “Big White Steamships” (The S.S. Catalina and the S.S. Avalon) of the 1920s and 30s became passé, and by the 1960s were discontinued in favor of smaller public ferryboats, due to decreasing tourist travel to the Island. Decade-by-decade, through the 1990s, the original beauty of Avalon’s signature Crescent Avenue waterfront promenade was losing its luster. Public workshops lead by architects and planners in the 1980’s failed to reach consensus on a program for expanding and improving the downtown waterfront. In 1996, the City of Avalon sent out requests for proposals for a new consultant team.  The patio and roofing tiles for the “new” Casino, built in the 1920s, used Catalina tile for the patio and 105,000 “Mission” tiles were used for the roofing material. The difficulty in reaching consensus was due to two distinctly different factions within the town. The “Preservationists” cherished the history of Avalon during its Wrigley heyday in the 1920s and 30s and did not want their town modernized and turned into another “Newport Beach or Santa Monica.” The “out-with-the-old/in-with-the-new” faction felt that the town had become run-down and needed changing. They were hoping for some bold innovations to create a new and more upscale feel. “I am going to leave no stone unturned to make it a refuge from worry and work for rich and poor.” —William Wrigley Jr Bob Borthwick, selected as the landscape architect and overall planner, met with Avalon’s then city manager, Rob Clark, prior to beginning the public workshop design process in the fall of 1996. “If you can come up with a design that everyone will agree to,” Clark stated, “it will be a miracle!” And so, on that note, the research and public input phase of the project began. Having worked on several projects for the City of Laguna Beach—also known as a city that has strong opinions and often divergent views—Borthwick’s experience with consensus building proved extremely valuable.  Designed by Otis Shepherd, the teeth on the Serpent Wall on Crescent Avenue are made from Catalina brick and the tiles are original Shepherd designs. Three types of bricks were made on the island—Catalina Bark, Descanso Tapestry, and the Avalon Tapestry style seen here. In addition, they made “Mission” tiles—clay roofing, the hollow tiles used in construction and glazed decorative tiles. Having a strong interest in architectural history, Borthwick learned that there was a large file box of old photographs of Avalon stored in the office of the city clerk, a longtime Avalon resident with strongly partisan preservationist views. Says Borthwick, “I went to her office, introduced myself, and asked if I could look through the file of old pictures. She looked at me sternly and said: ‘You’re that new consultant from ‘over town’ (the local’s term for the mainland) aren’t you?’ I said ‘yes’, and started to explain why I wanted to look through the photographs…. She cut me off and said: ‘Why don’t you just get back on that boat out there and go back where you came from! We don’t need designers over here, we like things fine just the way they are!’ I took a deep breath and explained that I understood her feelings and also appreciated the history of the island. My reason to study the photographs was, of course, to make the new improvements, especially tile and masonry elements, as historically accurate as possible. She finally, although reluctantly, agreed to let me borrow and copy some of the pictures, and eventually became one of the projects biggest supporters.”  A shot of the walkway before restoration. The following are a series of questions and Bob Borthwick’s answers about how this award-winning streetscape/urban design project came about. LASN: “How was this project different from other streetscape projects?” Borthwick: “Avalon is 26 miles from the coast of Southern California, in Los Angeles County. I think it’s safe to say that, in general, the 3,500 Avalon residents are independent and proud of the fact that they are not part of the greater Los Angeles megalopolis. They have no traffic signals, no malls, and are isolated from typical urban problems. As a result, they tend to strongly resist any attempts to change their town from its 1920s roots and make it more like the rest of Southern California. They are skeptical that consultants from ‘over town’ will ruin their town. I would probably feel the same way if I lived there. Luckily, my mother grew up in Los Angeles and her family vacations were spent in Avalon from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s. Every now and then I would bring up this bit of family history in a public workshop, and I don’t know, but it may have helped a bit with my credibility.”  The goal was to sensitively design the improvements to Casino Walkway and all other parts of the promenade so they’d look as if they’d always been there. Borthwick hopes that if Wrigley and Shepherd returned to Avalon today, they would say, “That’s just the way we would have done it.” LASN: “How did the public workshops add to the project?” Borthwick: “One of the most important issues was the redesign of the Crescent Avenue/Metropole Avenue intersection, the crossroads of downtown Avalon. The question was to either preserve the existing wide median island with benches and mature olive trees installed by Wrigley in the 1920s, or demolish the median and reconfigure the intersection to better accommodate the large tour busses owned by the Island Company. We had developed a preferred plan, which preserved the median island and made other alterations to accommodate the busses. We paid a traffic consultant to verify that the turning radii were workable. I presented the plan at a well-attended evening public workshop, and was met with vocal expressions of doubt by some community members. As the public debate continued, it appeared that there was an impasse: Could the busses make the turn, or not? All of a sudden, people started volunteering to help resolve the issue. A tour bus driver offered to bring his bus down to the intersection for a test run the next morning. The public works director volunteered to bring traffic cones to mark the proposed new curb locations. Someone else offered to videotape the dry run for the public record. Within a few minutes, a new on-site meeting was organized for the next morning. I delayed my trip back to the mainland to attend the new meeting, and it was done. Time after time, common sense and cooperation prevailed over ego and rigid thinking.”  Avalon already had a unique sense of place created in the 1920s. The key was to renovate and expand the downtown waterfront without overshadowing the subtle whimsy of the original Wrigley/Shepard design.  1934 LASN: “How was the city to work with?” Borthwick: “We were fortunate to have wonderfully supportive city staff working with us, and the project could not have succeeded without their efforts. Angelo Kedis was the consummate project manager, who could see the big picture, and knew how to achieve it. Pastor Lopez, the public works director, a native Avalon resident who grew up on the Island and has a deep and passionate love for Catalina’s history, gave me insights into local traditions and concerns. Rob Clark, the city manager who initiated the project, was behind the scenes yet brought out the best in everyone.”  The casino murals were never completed as tile murals due to time constraints. However, they are now being redone by tile artist Richard Keit as Wrigley had originally intended. LASN: “Were there any ‘turning points’ in the project?” Borthwick: “As the conclusion of the public workshop phase was approaching, I had a sense that it might not be possible to communicate the extent to which the public felt strongly about certain design elements in a city council meeting format…opening up the possibility that our workshop sessions could be for naught. I discussed this concern with the city’s project manager, and he agreed to ask the city council if we could have a town vote. To their credit, the council agreed. We set up models and graphic displays in the post office, along with a questionnaire. When the results were compiled, the council voted to go with the majority opinion in all cases, and the resulting design became accepted as the public’s own. From that point on, the community seemed to pull together and put aside their previous differences. A consensus master plan had been developed and approved.”  Taken in 1934, here Otis Shepherd is seen standing on top of one of the boxed large specimen trees—which included olive trees, palms and other mature plants—brought over by barge to adorn Crescent Avenue. LASN: “How was the construction of the project received by the business owners?” Borthwick: “Angelo Kedis had an uncanny knack of knowing when to hold firm when business owners or residents were complaining about the project, and when to approach me about possible design modifications if a complaint or suggestion seemed justified. For example, the contractors were starting to construct a seatwall near the take-out window of a local pizza restaurant. Prior to our project, the seatwall location had been a concrete sidewalk with two freestanding benches. The benches had been used for seating by those waiting for their pizza. The restaurant owner found Angelo, explained that with a longer seat wall and some other adjustments it would work better for him as well as his adjacent business neighbors. Angelo faxed over a sketch for me to look at, we talked about it over the phone, and a half hour later the revised seatwall was under construction.”  Townspeople could vote on design alternatives ranging from the shape and configuration of the main downtown vehicular intersection, to the style and color of waterfront promenade handrails. LASN: “Were there any personal interactions with townspeople that you would like to share?” Borthwick: “ This project was nothing if not personal. We had specified black, smooth, flat pebbles (commonly known as ‘Mexican Pebbles’) to be used as decorative treatment in paving bands on the streetscape walkways. A similar treatment had been used on the original Crescent Avenue promenade. The decorative pebbles, hand-set, were starting to be installed by the contractor. The following weekend, on a Sunday, I received a call at home from the director of the Catalina Museum, Patricia Moore, asking me if the pebbles being installed were local stones gathered from Avalon’s shoreline, or were they ‘just regular stones?’ I explained that on a publicly funded project such as this, we had to specify a commercially available product since the local stones would be either on public beach or adjacent private land (owned by the Santa Catalina Island Company). Patricia explained how island residents are particular about keeping ‘island blood’ in Avalon’s projects, and was sure that we could get permission to use some local stones from the SCIC to mix in with the other pebbles. I sensed the importance of this gesture, and agreed to meet on the island the next day to get things arranged with the SCIC. By about noon that day, a city crew accompanied by the contractor, arrived with several buckets of flat, egg-sized decorative stones from Avalon’s nearby Pebbly Beach. The museum director and I, along with a few other interested citizens, ceremoniously placed some native stones in the wet concrete adjacent to the other nearly identical stones. The remainder of the Avalon pebbles were then mixed in with the Mexican pebbles, infusing some ‘island blood’ into the paving bands.”  Residents realized that the Crescent Avenue Promenade was becoming shopworn, and wanted to restore its luster while still preserving the historic serpentine seating wall, along with the large specimen trees. LASN: “Are there any final thoughts you have about this project?” Borthwick: “I would like to say that Avalon is a very unique and special place, and it was an honor to be able to get to know its people and help to shape their town. There is a very fine line between improving and ruining a historical landscape, and I hope that we accomplished the former.”  Phillip Wrigley imported brick masons, tile setters and other artisans from Sicily to create the original fountains, seat walls and decorative paving.
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