Organizers’ vision for a new home for the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center came with a few critical criteria.
It had to be near the ocean, preferably in a high-traffic beach town with ample parking where visitors could stumble upon the world’s largest collection of surf memorabilia. The space needed to be big enough to hold hundreds of surfboards and thousands of invaluable relics and artifacts.
“That’s close to impossible to find along the coast,” said Dick Metz, who founded SHACC in 1999, its current building set in an industrial area of San Clemente about 2.5 miles away from the beach.
But after years of searching, a new location is being eyed for SHACC — and it is checking the boxes.
It is set in the heart of downtown Laguna Beach, just steps away from where Metz grew up on the sand at Main Beach nearly a century ago.
The sale is in escrow, with officials hoping the deal will close in coming months. In the 1940s, the building was home to the Sprouse Reitz Co., for years it was a drug store, but most recently it has been empty for several years.
“When I heard of this amazing place in Laguna, I knew this was it,” Metz said in a video announcing the news, unveiled at a fundraising event held at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano on May 10. “It just feels right.”
The building wasn’t for sale, but when Mark Christy, a Laguna Beach preservationist who sits on SHACC’s board, saw it was for rent, he reached out to the owners, the Fritz and Mary Lee Duda family, to see if they would be interested in selling the property.
Christy said he had previously tried to purchase the building 15 years ago, in an attempt to create an entertainment and music venue, but the owner turned him down.
“Without their philanthropy, this would never happen. They don’t need to sell property,” Christy said. “They made this happen because they recognized how important this was going to be for surfing heritage and for the city of Laguna.
“They went to extraordinary lengths to make this happen,” he added. “This is going to be a game changer for the official sport of the state of California, and a game changer for Laguna Beach on a level that is going to blow people’s minds.”
The new location for SHACC could have been Dana Point, with talks about a spot in the renovated harbor, or closer to the coast in San Clemente, both beach towns with rich roots in surf culture and history.
But Laguna Beach’s place in surf history also runs deep, with early-era surfers in town, George “Peanuts” Larson and Hevs McClelland, befriending Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic swimmer who spent time in Los Angeles for an acting career and rode waves at nearby Corona del Mar.
Metz said his dad would give Larson, McClelland and other Laguna Beach surfers a few burgers and beers to watch him, about 5 years old at the time. He would hop in the back of their car for surf outings around Laguna Beach and down to San Onofre.
“They just took me along wherever they went,” Metz said about the Depression-era surf adventures.
Laguna Beach is also where Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board, grew up. Before his invention rose to popularity, he was a hot-shot surfer and board maker.
Jeff Alter, the current executive director at SHACC, also talked about his family’s legacy in Laguna Beach, his father, Hobie Alter, was an inventor who, among other things, mass-produced foam boards that helped popularize the sport by making them lighter and easier to make.
Laguna Beach is also where SHACC got its start, Metz first renting a small office in the ’90s on top of the Royal Hawaiian just next to Main Beach to keep his collection, which he has been acquiring since the ’60s.
Not long after, he met Spencer Croul, also an avid board collector with a passion for surf history, and the two would join their collections to get SHACC off the ground. Croul found the large building in the hills of San Clemente the center is in now, and the duo spawned what is considered to be the world’s largest collection of surf artifacts, often referred to as the “Smithsonian of Surf.”
Croul, in the short documentary about SHACC created by surf historian Chris Mauro, said it’s not just the old boards he wanted to preserve.
“I noticed there wasn’t a lot of material, not a lot of books, or history,” he said. “The library, the surf photography, the art, the journalism, the romance, the characters and the beauty associated with it — that’s what people have to know about. And that’s where I thought, ‘I want to raise the bar,’ professionalizing surfing history and culture.”
Metz had already made his mark in the surf world when SHACC first opened. He was already an industry leader who owned and operated Hobie Surf Shops and other retail operations around the world and was a known surf explorer, traveling the globe to South Africa and beyond for a three-year adventure to become the inspiration for the film “Endless Summer.”
“All of a sudden, I’m back in Laguna. I’ve done this whole 360 and I ended up back at Main Beach in Laguna,” said Metz, now 95. “I’m so excited about this new location. It’s going to knock your socks off. If you don’t wear socks, it will knock your shorts off. It’s going to be awesome.”
On a recent visit to the property, SHACC board members gave a sneak peek of the building to share their vision.
Behind the dusty doors is an expansive 12,000-square-foot space – about 9,500 square feet downstairs slated for exhibits and entertainment, and another 2,400 square feet upstairs for offices, storage and archives.
Large wooden beams stretch across the 30-foot-tall ceilings, and the rustic red brick walls will remain in the building that spans between Broadway Street and Ocean Avenue.
“Even these lights are wicked cool,” Christy said about the large globe fixtures. “There’s so much potential to do some insane stuff. We’re super stoked on what’s already here.”
There’s a vision for a temporary stage for music bands or inspirational talks, a small bar area for beer and wine, a place that can be used for large gatherings or where corporate groups can “sit amongst this quiver of historic boards.”
With the LA28 Olympics surf competition to be held nearby in Lower Trestles, south of San Clemente, the hope is for SHACC to become a gathering spot for production crews and meet-and-greets during the games.
The price is not being disclosed, Christy said, but 75% of the cost has already been donated, half coming from Metz and the other half from a longtime SHACC supporter and donor known only as “Mr. Big.”
Other fundraisers, such as the one held at the Ecology Center, will help to cover the remainder of the purchase price and the current building in San Clemente will be sold to help offset some of the cost, as well.
The project is expected to be discussed at the May 21 Laguna Beach City Council meeting.