By PAUL HUGHES
Associate Reporter
Buena Park is exceedingly normal, and the folks there like that just fine.
In fact, they’re quite proud about it in a low-key way.
“We’ve got a great city,” said Mayor Patsy Marshall, who prefers,no, insists,you call her Patsy.
She requires it in a sharp-but-kind way, like a schoolmarm teaching grammar. She corrects a reporter several times until he gets it right: “Patsy.”
Asked about the North County city’s highlights, Marshall names just about everything a city could be involved in: senior and youth programs, policing, parks and recreation, business, etc.
“I think we’re great at everything,” she said.
Marshall goes on to mention libraries, community theater, an Easter egg hunt and historic buildings.
Buena Park could be the most Mayberry city in Orange County.
The city’s slogan,”Center of the Southland”, isn’t just a geographic designation. It’s a personality: average, grounded, plugging along.
“I can’t tell you anything controversial,” the mayor said.
Buena Park has its share of issues, including crime and urban blight.
But Gail Dixon, chief executive of the chamber of commerce, is clear: “We’re normal and happy to be normal. Absolutely right.”
After all, what could be more average American than buying a car, which is big business in Buena Park. The city’s auto dealers along the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway do well more than half a billion dollars in sales annually.
And there’s nothing more Middle America than Knott’s Berry Farm and a host of kitschy tourist businesses that surround it on Beach Boulevard.
Knott’s Berry Farm and its Soak City water park see more than 3.5 million visitors a year, according to owner Cedar Fair LP.
Medieval Times, another middle class tourist magnet on Beach Boulevard, bills itself as “the biggest dinner attraction in North America.”
A nearby pirate-themed dinner theater called Pirate’s Adventure is enjoying spillover interest from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, which stems from a ride at neighboring Disneyland in Anaheim, which often overshadows Buena Park.
The city’s “aw shucks” attitude prevails throughout. Interviews with city officials are casual. City Council meetings are marked by humor. Everyone really does seem to know each other.
At the same time, Buena Park has stars in its eyes and high hopes, like a Midwesterner fresh off the bus.
Buena Park Downtown, the city’s mall, saw a life-saving $50 million makeover several years ago. Now it’s adding stores and holding more events.
“Forty years ago it was a premier mall,” Buena Park City Manager Rick Warsinski said.
It will be again, he insists.
Elsewhere, the city has bought and is rezoning land to spur development, including the former Movieland Wax Museum and some seedy hotels.
A Metrolink station opens in July with new homes alongside it from Seal Beach’s Olson Co. and Britain’s Taylor Woodrow PLC.
Nabisco Site
In a town that’s 99% built out, 25 acres is set for development where the iconic Nabisco building once stood, soon as the Santa Ana Freeway widening winds down. Kraft Foods Inc. closed the plant in 2005.
Anyone who’s driven north to Los Angeles knows Buena Park. It’s where the Santa Ana and Riverside (91) freeways split from each other.
The city is home to about eight auto dealers selling a dozen makes, including three that qualify for the Business Journal’s yearly list of the largest dealers in the county: Mercedes dealer House of Imports, Shelly BMW and Power Toyota.
That’s a lot of sales tax for city coffers.
Shelly BMW recently completed a $16 million renovation.
“In 1990, they sold 26 new cars and seven used cars per month,” Mayor Marshall said, having recently attended the grand re-opening. “Now they sell 210 new and 76 pre-owned every month.”
City Manager Warsinski, for his part, loves the auto dealers.
“It gets people stopping at Buena Park,” he said. “People like not having to go to Cerritos,” as in the Cerritos Auto Square, farther up the freeway.
The city’s big attraction, Knott’s Berry Farm, always has been about Americana, even if it’s now only loosely based on the roadside berry farm and homemade jelly stand of Walter and Cordelia Knott.
While Magic Mountain has the fastest rides and Disneyland a moviesque magic, Knott’s is a place where parents actually can take a break while still providing the kids with the requisite rides.
Sure, Knott’s has roller coasters. But it also has gold panning, biscuit mix and a campy train robbery.
And, of course, there’s the chicken dinner house.
The city is looking to build on its tourist strip built around Knott’s, dubbed the E-Zone.
“The entertainment corridor is the No. 1 goal of the council,” Marshall said.
Movieland Site
The city recently bought the Movieland Wax Museum site for $8.6 million. The museum closed last year. The parcel is about eight acres.
“It’s the core of the entertainment area,” Warsinski said. “It will help shape what the E-Zone will be.”
The city doesn’t yet know what it will do with the land. Surprisingly for a staid city such as Buena Park, one suggestion is for mid-rise condominiums with shops and other businesses.
“Live-work” development could work in Buena Park, Warsinski said.
Newport Beach-based Burnham USA Equities Inc., which had planned to redevelop the site with a Best Buy before the electronics retailer backed out, says it still would be interested in working on a project.
“We’re hoping we’d be invited to purchase the property from the city” or work with Buena Park on developing it, Burnham Vice President Stephen K. Thorp said.
That site and other efforts along Beach Boulevard don’t specifically have to be for tourists, according to officials.
“The city is conscientious about trying to attract quality businesses to Buena Park to augment tourism,” the chamber’s Dixon said.
Buena Park has bought several motels, including the Palm Inn, Golden State and the Pioneer, which were better at keeping police officers busy on vice calls than attracting tourists.
They’re set to be redeveloped as well, Warsinski said.
“We’re recreating what Buena Park is all about,” he said.
In moderation, of course.
“The goal is a balanced community in Buena Park,” Marshall said.
Buena Park hasn’t been thought of as a shopping hub for years, unless you’re talking about cars.
Buena Park Downtown wants to change that.
The mall isn’t out to lure the hip like The Block at Orange or the big money shoppers of Fashion Island. But co-owner Developers Diversified Realty Corp. of Ohio nonetheless has big plans.
Developers Diversified, which also manages the mall, is benefiting from the mall’s recent makeover.
There’s an artistry not normally seen in shopping centers,the mall’s Krikorian 18-screen movie theater sports two huge murals in the lobby.
“Given the tenant mix and the demographics,” said Dawn Lecklikner, Developers Diversified’s vice president of property management, the focus is on families, kids, and yes, even tourists.
“You’re out here to visit Knott’s but you forgot the suntan lotion,” she said. “So you hit the mall,” which includes a Wal-Mart.
For residents, the mall has events for kids and also may host a farmer’s market the city wants, Lecklikner said.
“If this wasn’t the local makeup, it wouldn’t be our focus,” she said.
The city’s big project: the former Nabisco building.
Three times larger than Movieland’s site, the Nabisco plant was a homey and familiar landmark for decades, clearly visible to drivers coming to OC.
“It’s the gateway to Orange County,” said Michael Gaumond, development and construction vice president for San Francisco’s Seligman Western Enterprises Ltd., which owns the site. “People know the Nabisco building.”
Or they used to, anyway. The building has been demolished. The site’s 25 acres are in flux right now amid the freeway widening.
Gaumond said he can’t design the parcel until he knows where the highway goes and what the off-ramps will look like.
“We’ve had some delays,” Gaumond said. “Hopefully we’ll get the details ironed out within two to four months.”
Buena Park has zoned the site for a big retailer,at least 100,000 square feet,and several midsize retailers,25,000 to 40,000 square feet.
The project could be worth about $55 million when fully developed, Gaumond said.
Korean-Americans
Another burgeoning part of Buena Park: Korean-Americans.
Their businesses are big here, and getting bigger,growing by “leaps and bounds,” said William Im, president of Uniti Bank on Beach Boulevard, which caters to Koreans.
Korean businesses have come to Buena Park in the past 10 years, especially to the northern end of Beach Boulevard. Much of the population is a spillover from neighboring Fullerton, a mecca for Koreans because of its schools.
There are 200 small to midsize Korean businesses, 10 larger restaurants,a key element,and one big grocery store that took over a former Kmart.
There’s also a Korean-American chamber of commerce forming,”slowly,” Im said. There are some 50 Korean churches in Buena Park and Fullerton, a few with upward of several thousand members.
Meanwhile, Buena Park’s Metrolink station is set to open in July.
As of May, developer Olson was two-thirds sold on 100 homes at Founders Walk next to the station. The company expects to finish selling by the end of the year. The homes are going for $500,000 to the $600,000s.
Taylor Woodrow is just starting to sell its 92 homes.
The city, like a good-meaning neighbor, also encourages residents to fix up their homes, offering grants, rebates and loans. Like most older North County cities, it has its share of rundown homes and buildings.
