A new art collection depicting the history of San Clemente, with an eye on some of its oldest buildings and the beach town’s founders, is among several new permanent art displays now on view in the newly reopened Main Salon of Casa Romantica’s Cultural Center and Garden.

The salon, which opened Friday, Oct. 4, after being closed because of the unstable hillside beneath the historic San Clemente landmark, has been refurbished with new paint and tiles. The space allows the casa to showcase its art and hold indoor events and concerts.

Friday’s event included a ribbon-cutting, docent-led tours of the casa’s open areas and entertainment. Mayor Victor Cabral, City Manager Andy Hall and councilmembers Chris Duncan and Steve Knoblock were there, along with members from the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce and dozens from the community.

“While it was one of the most challenging years, it’s been the most rewarding because as a team, we got to dive in and make it better than it was,” Casa Romantica Executive Director Kylie Travis said. “Opening the salon is a huge milestone and is getting us back to what Casa Romantica is. I’m so honored to show it to the community.”

For 18 months, the space, which now showcases the historical community exhibit, along with another display dedicated to the impact of surfing in San Clemente and one devoted to the rich cultural heritage of the Native American people, was closed off to visitors. The landslide tore off parts of the historic property once home to Ole Hansen, the beach town’s founder, and now owned by the city.

The slide, which occurred on April 28, 2023, also tore apart the historic property’s ocean view terrace, sending debris and rubble into several units of a condominium complex below and onto the railroad tracks along the beach. The ocean terrace, southern gardens and amphitheater remain closed.

The landslide stopped train travel in the area and forced the historic home to cancel art shows, programs, concerts and a host of weddings planned for the spring and summer of 2023. Land movement continued for several months, and in July 2023, the City Council approved spending $8.5 million to stabilize the slope.

In November, after the California Coastal Commission issued an emergency permit, crews began working on the slope stabilization. Though winter rainstorms set the work schedule back a bit, crews installed four rows of tiebacks that were bored into the hillside and stabilized with cables connected to concrete beams to keep the slope intact.

With that part of the stabilization now completed, Travis said it allowed the casa to reopen the salon. Next steps, she said, is “digging a keyway at the base of the slope,” which will then be restored with the soil that was removed. More materials will be added to strengthen the slope to make it more stable but, once done, it will still look like a natural coastal slope, she said.

Getting the salon ready for its reveal on Friday also took some doing, Travis said.

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“We lost our wheelchair ramp in the slide,” she said, adding that it was a bit harder to move things back into the salon, which had undergone its own refurbishment during its downtime.

Casa staff redid the community history display set around the fireplace to make it more centric to San Clemente.

“We had photos and other things about Orange County, even Venice and Huntington Beach that didn’t quite make sense why it was here,” Travis said. “Now we’re more focused on the history and buildings of San Clemente like the casino, the Beach Club and the community center.”

They also updated their collection dedicated to the area’s early residents, the Acjachemen tribe. Travis said she and others from casa worked with representatives from the tribe to make sure the depictions were accurate.

They also updated their surfing collection to show the early influence of surfers who came to the beach town from Hawaii and how they influenced the community’s surfing roots.

A fun note in reworking that display, Travis said, was when surfer Caroline Marks, who lives in San Clemente, won the women’s surfing gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Tahiti. That required a tweak and an addition to the display now exhibited in the salon.

With Friday’s reopening of the salon, Travis said she looks forward to the center’s fall programming, which sometimes requires an indoor setting.

“It adds value to the experience and keeps people wanting to come back,” she said. “We hadn’t changed the space in 20 years. It’s our responsibility to make this the best it can be.”

Knoblock, who has followed the reconstruction effort closely since the slide’s first movement, said he was thrilled at the salon’s opening, calling it a “step in the right direction.”

“It’s nice that the community has access to the beautiful facility again,” he said.

Next up will be restoring the view terrace at the back of the property. That requires a sign-off from the Coastal Commission, which he said he is hopeful can be accomplished in the next six months.

“We don’t expect,” he said, “the Coastal Commission will be an impediment.”

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