Pier resort developer unveils plans for Top Gun house

By: CHRIS TRIBBEY - Staff Writer | Saturday, January 28, 2006 3:48 PM PST ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- Tom Cruise's character in "Top Gun" took a shower there. In a couple years, people may be having drinks in the same place. Or buying candy. Or eating ice cream.

The developer of a proposed 302-room Westin resort across the street and south of the municipal pier has narrowed its plans for the Top Gun house at 102 Pacific St.

The home was made famous in the 1986 film as the spot where Cruise's and Kelly McGillis' characters kicked off their love affair. The developer has agreed with the city and a preservation group to incorporate the home into plans for the resort, moving it a block north, and in all likelihood, turning it into a bar and waiting area next to a restaurant overlooking the pier.

That's the preferred plan, although there are also proposals to turn the house into a candy shop, an ice cream parlor, or even a bakery, according to Jeremy Cohen, senior vice president of developer S.D. Malkin.

"This offers the right balance," Cohen said, referring to plans to use the house as a bar and waiting area for a restaurant. "City staff thought it was a good solution. We've gone the extra mile to keep that building. It's in a central part of the entire project, and it would be a centerpiece (of the resort) for the public."

Cohen said the plan now is to move the home to the north end of the two-block hotel project, appeasing historians and preservation groups that didn't want the home moved away from Pacific Street. He said the challenge now is fitting the wooden home's Victorian design in with the more modern beachfront resort plans.

"From my perspective, it's not the major issue of the project," Cohen said, adding that incorporating the home into the resort plans will result in added costs to the city and project.

Save Our Heritage Organisation, a nonprofit preservation group that lobbied the City Council to protect the house from being razed, preferred that the Top Gun home stay where it is and that developers would work around it, but "this is acceptable," said Bruce Coons, the group's executive director.

"We want to make sure the building is maintained and that it has a viable reuse," Coons said. "We've agreed that they'll ... move it one block north. You'll be able to sit on that porch and see pretty much the same view you saw in 1887 (when the home was built).

"We just want to keep it historic. We think people are going to be excited about it."

Still a tourist draw
The vacant, single-story Victorian home is coated in faded-blue paint with white trim, and the steps leading up the front door are cracked and withered. For as nondescript as it appears from the street, the house is still a big tourist draw, according to neighbors.

"People are taking pictures of it all the time," said Mallory Richards, 17. Her family has lived next door to the Top Gun house on Pacific Street for 13 years.

"It's big inside," said James Richards, 43. "Entire buses of Japanese tourists used to pull up, and everyone would get out and take pictures."

He predicted that refurbishing the home and moving it will take a lot of work.

"It hasn't had any general maintenance in quite some time," Richards said. "They'll really have to shore it up to move it."

Richards added that the work would be worth it, however.

"It's very cute inside," he said. "Very old, handcrafted architecture, and it's in good shape."

Last April, Jane McVey, Oceanside's economic development and redevelopment director, put the cost to move the 119-year-old house at about $300,000, though with renovations and plans to incorporate the home into the resort, Cohen said it's too early to tell how much it will cost to move the home.

"It's a delicate one-story cottage," he said.

As James Richards was talking Friday, a family of five from New York walked up the porch of the Top Gun home, and began taking pictures.

"It's the Top Gun house!" yelled Michael Santos, a former Oceanside resident. "It's part of the reason we came here. But (the house) used to be brown."

Contact staff writer Chris Tribbey at (760) 901-4067 or ctribbey@nctimes.com. To comment, go to nctimes.com.

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