Mayor Seeks Input After History Comes To Light
By Jondi Gumz
Capitola residents can look forward to a new park on the Rispin Mansion property, .86 acres purchased for $1.35 million by the City of Capitola in 1985.
As Mayor Yvette Brooks said in the online Capitola Town Hall update at the end of February, it’s been a long time coming.
Pool in front of Rispin Mansion
After a 2009 fire turned the 22-room mansion built in 1921 into a public nuisance, the city spent $649,000 to mothball the property, fencing it to keep out trespassers. After that, the city spent $900,000 to bring a nearby path up to code, resolving a lawsuit by a woman injured when her motorized wheelchair tipped over on the path’s uneven pavement.
With the Great Recession and the COVID shutdowns, the city didn’t have the money to create a new park until a $383,000 state grant in 2014 made the prospect tantalizingly possible.
The city plans call for restoring the property’s historic features, such as the grand staircase, reflection pool, sundial, and fountain and adding new amenities such as a bocce ball court, a children’s nature area, gardens and interpretive displays, all with a theme of harking back to when the mansion was built in the Roaring Twenties.
In January, California State Parks awarded Capitola $178,000 for the project. That wasn’t enough to create the park as designed by Capitola resident Mike Arnone of MA+A Architects, “a gorgeous design” in the mayor’s opinion, estimated to cost $825,000.
But State Parks is making more grant money available.
Rispin Mansion
So in February, the City Council approved the conceptual plans, a necessity to apply for a grant, and authorized applying for $482,000.
City Manager Jamie Goldstein said the city should find out this year whether the grant will be awarded.
“I’m excited … It’s going to be a beautiful space,” said Mayor Brooks. “A place for children to play.”
She said she heard concerns at a city workshop in December, which took place online due to COVID, questioning whether the park should bear the name of Rispin, a San Francisco entrepreneur who purchased the resort area of Capitola after World War I and built the mansion as a showcase in hopes of attracting vacationers.
Historian Carolyn Swift, formerly curator of the Capitola Historical Museum, told the Times, “I studied and studied everything I could find about Rispin until I understood the kind of man he really was.”
She learned he was an orphan who never went beyond high school, had dreams of being an opera singer and a theater actor, then married an heiress — the daughter of the founder of Conoco Oil.
“He was part of a syndicate that wanted to develop land along the California coast, and was the front man,” she said. “Rispin wanted to become an oil millionaire. He wasn’t a slick operator, but he was in over his head … He didn’t have the skills.”
Deed Restriction
Evy Brown, a semi-retired lawyer, owns the last farmhouse left on Clares Street, built in 1927.
She does not want the name of Henry Allen Rispin on the city’s new park.
That’s because the deed to her home has a restrictive covenant mandating who can and cannot buy the property.
It says, “That said property shall never be occupied by any person or persons other than of the Caucasian or white race … to their heirs and assigns forever.”
As Brown sees it, this is a racially restrictive covenant, which people in power used to keep individuals deemed undesirable out of neighborhoods, limit land ownership and acquisition of wealth.
Swift sees it differently.
“In those days, nearly all real estate deeds and rental agreements had covenants regarding race,” she said. “This was particularly true of resort areas.”
She added,” I would not brand Rispin a racist in his own time, or probably any time, given that it was language picked up and forwarded on until somebody realized that ‘whites only’ not only didn’t apply, it wasn’t appropriate.”
Brown considers justifications to celebrate Rispin and name a park after him troubling.
She suggests a cultural sensitivity study be performed by independent parties with no financial interest when decisions are made to protect the public trust.
Mayor Brooks asked city staff to research whether Rispin’s name had “any issues,” and she expects a report back “in the next coming months.”
“It’s our due diligence to make we’re headed in the right direction in terms of …what we are naming it,” she said. “I appreciate everyone’s input on that matter. “It is really important we learn more about the history of Capitola and the folks that lived here.”
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Read about the park project at www.cityofcapitola.org/communitydevelopment/page/rispin-park-project#:~:text=In%20July%202014%2C%20the%20City,grounds%20to%20create%20an%20approximately%20
Read about Capitola founding by Carolyn Swift: www.cityofcapitola.org/capitola-museum/page/brief-history-capitola