OPINION: The Canyonization of Avenida Del Mar

San Clemente California is colloquially known as a "beach town."
California's coastline, top to bottom, runs 840-miles of "beach towns."

"Beach towns" along California's long, glorious coast are where most  people would live if they could. "Beach town" conjures up vacation, ocean breezes, holiday, kicked-back lifestyle, easygoing, no worries, and of course endless summers and or heaven on earth, is probably why TV commercials love beach scenes best.

And why most TV's beach scenes are in California, the perfect place to beach yourself.

But popularity is a double-edged sword. Easy, breezy and kicked-back 
at the beach, can quickly turn into "Get me out of here, this place 
is too crowded."

San Clemente is struggling internally with its deserved popularity; its darling 
main street Avenida Del Mar slopes gracefully down to water's edge. Anyone who's ever walked it, shopped it or dined along it declares it the sweetest beach-street place to be, if and when it's not swarmed over by the cascading multitudes careening off the 5 Freeway on weekends, lusting after your resident-tax-paid share of Avenida Del Mar's delightful ocean view experience.

Fact: One overcrowded beach-street experience is one too many. Yet some in San Clemente want to overcrowd Avenida Del Mar permanently.

They want to a lot. "Go up, up, up, and they will come," brings us to that odd word in the title:
"Canyonization," Turning once quaint boulevards, never designed to host multitudes, into deep retail canyons, by building up, up, up. Some, on San Clemente's Planning Commission believe going bigger, higher, taller along Avenida 
Del Mar will enhance San Clemente's small town character.

Hmm, really?

So bigger, is more "villagey" than smaller? A curious assumption.
One planning commissioner went around town photographing the largest structures she could find, to bolster her assertion that bigger, taller, higher, is ahh, as charming?

As charming as what, the Hindenburg?

She praised Europe's small towns. Densely populated cliffs and canyons stacked-up higher than San Clemente ever should be, as charming (maybe 
a nice place to visit, but would you want to live there?). Where the village baker lives happily above his shop. And above him, layer upon layer, of who, the butcher and the candlestick maker? Brings to mind the phrase "Tourist Trap."

Canyonization and Tourist Trap beg the same question: do the residents of San Clemente want a canyonized, bigger, higher, taller tourist trap to live in, versus the sweet, human scale San Clemente of today?

Some on Planning Commission seem to think we can have both our cake and eat it too? Wouldn't it be sweet if it were true. But it's not. And never will be, no  matter the gobs of sugary frosting ladled upon their multilayered down-town scheme, finally overwhelming Ave Del Mar's too small plate.

Overindulgence is never healthy. We either keep San Clemente the sweetest beach town on California's coast, or Katie bar the door. No one moved to San Clemente to feel trapped.

The majority of San Clemente residents have spoken - "No Canyonization of 
our downtown. It's big enough!"

But our Planning Commission doesn't get it. Or, are they listening to the go-big voices whispering in their ears, "it's okay, let's go big," ignoring what San Clemente residents not only want, but demand: "Don't mess with perfection. Keep Avenida Del Mar the sweet-spot it is."

Let those other beach towns become congested tourist traps, but not San Clemente. Bigger ain't better. It's just bigger.

The other option: rename the Planning Commission "The Downtown Overdevelopment Club," because that's where they're headed. And that's the wrong direction for San Clemente.

If San Clemente's Planning Commission holds to their wrong-way tack to overwhelm the sweetest beach street in Southern 
California, it's time for a entirely new Planning Commission, before it's too late. Because it's obvious, they're no longer hearing "us," the voting residents of San Clemente.

Note: just yesterday at lunch,a 30-year SC resident/neighbor commented, "What's up with Del Mar? I went to do a little shopping Thursday and there was no parking. Finally I ended up parking illegally around the corner. Luckily I wasn't ticketed."

My reply, "Wait till they canyonize Del Mar - you'll be parking up at the high school, and shuttling there to shop. Or more likely, you'll drive to the mall instead."