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There's cash in kitsch, retro promoters say
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer TREASURE ISLAND -- The neon promises of air conditioning and vacancy lure Michael Stutz here year after year. Over the Treasure Island Causeway, "a 1930s art moderne gem," says Stutz. Right at the unmistakable Thunderbird, which has screamed a welcome to visitors since it first lit up the island in 1957. North to The Surf, with its funky Jetsonian arch out front. This architecture has its own nickname: "googie," named after a Sunset Strip coffee shop from the era. It also has a clique of followers, who warn that modernist buildings from the Space Age are on the brink of extinction, just as "retro-tourism" is gaining popularity. So in Treasure Island, where developers and city officials see rundown properties taking up valuable beachside space, googie fans see a playland of authentic mid century architecture. "Treasure Island could be a world-class haven of one of America's greatest periods of culture and design," said Stutz, 30, of Cleveland, who wasn't even born when the turquoise diamond pattern on the side of Treasure Island's Algiers Gulf Resort was stylish. "It's a modernist haven there." Just as Victorian mansions were shunned when ranch houses were all the rage and art deco architecture was considered ugly in the 1970s, googie enthusiasts say Treasure Island's quintessential mid century artifacts are endangered by proposed land development rules that encourage developers to replace old relics with skyrise hotels. "Buildings that are about 30 or 40 years old are generally poorly received," said Christine Madrid French, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Recent Past Preservation Network. "It's not quite old enough to be looked at with nostalgia." Stutz, with help from French's organization, has connected a smattering of Treasure Island tourists on a Web site devoted to preserving the city's architecture (www.recentpast.org/groups/treasure). The group's members don't have much influence on the city they love to visit, given that they don't vote or live here. But that hasn't stopped them from trying to spread the word that Treasure Island's kitsch could be a cash cow. They point to places such as Wildwood, N.J., for proof of what Treasure Island could become. Wildwood, in the early 1960s a mecca for families looking for a clean beach and wide boardwalk, fell into disrepair in the 1970s and became downright seedy in the '80s. Its renaissance began in 1996, when professors and students of architecture and urban planning at Pennsylvania, Yale and Kent State universities suggested the beach take advantage of its architecture and promote itself as a retro attraction. Hotels were remodeled in the theme, said Andrew Cripps, executive director of the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce. Occupancy rates went up. The beach attracted the interest of travel writers. The notion was never to make the hotels authentic 1950s getaways, but better, with modern stylized furnishings. George Makrauer, a former city commissioner whose Internet postings occasionally appear on Stutz's Web site, said Treasure Island's motels "are cheesy enough" without help from preservationists. He criticizes the tourists' ideas, saying Treasure Island's motels are too worn to be refurbished. "When you refer to 1950s and '60s architecturally designed properties, Treasure Island's are more on the decrepit side than on the quaint side," Makrauer said. In fact, Makrauer continued, respectable Treasure Island residents send their out-of-town relatives to St. Pete Beach for a place to stay. But googie enthusiasts love the Tahitian, an old-fashioned boxy motel that took its name from the Polynesian movement, popular after GIs returned home from the South Pacific, and the Satellite, its name inspired by moon launches and earth orbits. And, of course, the Surf, which Stutz's Web site calls "Treasure Island's most spectacular remaining mid-century modern oceanside property -- and possibly its most endangered." In contrast, City Manager Chuck Coward called the Surf "one of those $42-a-night and you bring your own toilet paper" motels. Coward points out that Treasure Island's residents already have turned down a recommendation from a city consultant that the city capitalize on its retro appeal by designing welcome signs and other amenities reminiscent of the style. The public insisted "they did not want to live in the past," Coward said, so commissioners instead adopted the Florida vernacular style. That decision was made a couple years ago, before Treasure Island was faced with its current dilemma: what form beachfront redevelopment will take. In November, residents will vote on whether to give themselves power to turn down future increases in density. If such power lies in residents' hands, Treasure Island could be forced to get more creative in how it attracts tourists. The distinctive architecture could come in handy, said Alan Hess, author of Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture. He points to a current project under way in Scottsdale, Ariz., where a developer had planned to raze a 1956 roadside motel and build a high-density project, but decided he could make more money by upgrading the existing motel. "It depends on whether a community can organize land owners into a group that will say, "We have a vision for our area, and we can work together to bring an exclusivity to our area,' " Hess said. "It's a phenomenon. It's definitely growing."
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