AVILA'S DO-OVER CENTRAL COAST BEACH TOWN HAS RISEN IMPRESSIVELY FROM THE SLUDGE.

Byline: STORY AND PHOTOS BY ERIC NOLAND

Travel Editor

AVILA BEACH -- Imagine being faced with an imperative -- or graced with an opportunity -- to start all over again on your home. Right from scratch.

More windows. Swapping Tudor for Mission Revival. Losing this interior wall entirely. Maybe even giving the whole thing another 20 feet of setback from the road. The prospect might be liberating or terrifying, or equal parts both.

Now imagine an entire town confronted with this mandate.

It happened in Avila Beach, a sleepy little coastal village just south of San Luis Obispo. In 1989, some locals acquired building permits and began to dig foundations. "It was like 'The Beverly Hillbillies,'" said local innkeeper Michael Kidd. "They were striking oil."

Oil and fuel that had seeped into the ground over decades from leaky Unocal pipelines that ran beneath the town. It was an environmental catastrophe. But after years of legal wranglings, a solution was reached: The oil company leveled Avila's tiny business district and began scooping up and hauling off more than 200,000 tons of contaminated dirt and sand.

When the cleanup work was completed in 2000, Avila Beach was presented with a unique challenge: Re-create your community, however you conceive it.

The process has been painstaking, and the work isn't quite done yet, but the results are impressive.

The buildings of the business district were deliberately designed to follow no deliberate design. Avila had grown in fits and starts since the 1920s, and always had a funky, haphazard aspect. Though everything is new, it still does.

One block along the waterfront has been designated pedestrian-only, and has benches, tree wells holding mature palm trees, and walkways and walls with inlaid tile and replicas of tide pool treasures. Unocal paid for a park at the north end of town, which has climbing toys for the kiddies and the most scenic basketball courts this side of Laguna Beach.

Lenny Harris, co-owner of the Avila Grocery, takes pride in how his establishment represents a key cog in the town's recovery. The 1920 building was one of only two that was spared demolition (the Avila Beach Yacht Club, which sits at the foot of the pier, was the other; both were removed and stored on blocks in another part of town).

"Before it was remodeled," Harris said, "the developer brought in historians and looked at old pictures, then tried to create what it once was."

Lumber was specially milled to match the original grooves, sand was added to paint to lend a stressed look, the ice box was reconstructed, and the original Douglas fir floors -- salvaged from a gymnasium in the '20s -- were laid back down.

It's now back to being the community gathering place it always had been, dispensing gourmet coffee, breakfast, sandwiches and good cheer.

"A lady came in a while back and said, 'I know it's the same. I recognize that spot in the ceiling.'" Harris said with a chuckle. "Well, it had been gutted to the studs."

Avila Beach's appeal over the years has been based on several factors.

To begin with, it is somewhat isolated, tucked well off Highway 101. It also faces south, and shelters in a cup of coastal mountains. As such, Avila is blessed with an agreeable microclimate. Winds can be battering the Morro Bay sand spit to the north, Pismo Beach can be socked in with fog to the south, but on the same day here it can be sunny, still and 70 degrees.

There were built-in limits to the town's growth, too. Unocal owned a tank farm on a hill to the south (Chevron has it now), while Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant occupies the land to the north -- pretty much precluding any sprawling housing developments.

Limited water supply also kept a curb on growth for many years. So Avila Beach has changed little -- still confined to 10 square blocks, with about 300 residents.

On a recent winter visit, we found that it offers many pleasant diversions.

Bicycles were available for rent at our beachfront lodgings, the stylish, comfortable -- and, of course, brand-new -- Avila Lighthouse Suites. (The bikes are only for guests, but the Sea Barn in town also rents them.)

Like much of the Central Coast, this community is very bike-friendly. The Bob Jones Bike Trail, which can be picked up at the rear of the downtown district, runs three miles out to the highway, and what a peaceful world it traverses.

The trail circumnavigates a golf course before following Avila Creek and its shady canopy of sycamores and coast live oaks. We were serenaded by bird song and croaking frogs, saw a cottontail rabbit scamper into the brush, pedaled past a playground and fruit orchards, and wheeled within a few feet of an utterly unconcerned great blue heron high-stepping next to the golf course.

Afterward, we were pleased to find a wide shoulder along Avila Beach Drive, which meant not having to jostle with the traffic on the ride out to Harford Pier at Port San Luis.

Sea lions use the pier for shelter and wriggle onto barges to rest, and their cacophonous barking can be heard at all hours. It's a fitting soundtrack for a stroll on the rough wood planking, surveying such requisite offerings as sportfishing and whale-watch cruises, a choose-your-own live crab stand, a seafood restaurant with a view (the Olde Port Inn) and an open-air fish market. At the latter, a brown pelican was standing nearby, seemingly as tame as a cat, hoping to snatch a mishandled morsel.

On the ride back, upon dipping down to Olde Port Beach, we found that the bike tires gained plenty of purchase in the firm sand at low tide. The view from here was stunning, with the bay punctuated by its three piers. This is also called Dog Beach -- the rare stretch of shore where dogs can frolic off-leash.

Back at Avila Beach, there were no indications that a cesspool of crude only recently percolated beneath these sands. Families played on the swings, built sand castles and walked out to the end of the pier.

Only a few people ventured into the water, though, and they only braved knee-deep depths. The warning signs on the beach probably have a lot to do with that. The bay here is popular with sea lions, dolphins and harbor seals, which spells seafood buffet for predators. A woman swimming just offshore in August 2003 was attacked and killed by a great white shark.

Dry land was perfectly suitable for us, especially when we discovered the tide- pool wonderland in the southern reaches of the beach. The rocks here are studded with mussels, barnacles and anemones -- some of the latter as big as grapefruits. The real treat, however, was spying a half-dozen large starfish in vivid colors of orange and purple.

Another planned excursion at Avila Beach was scuttled, to our dismay.

The Pecho Coast Trail winds through the coastal hills to Point San Luis, where an 1890 lighthouse stands in all its Victorian charm. But the trail is on PG&E land, so the only way to reach it is on a guided hike (of seven miles round trip) with a representative of the utility.

Though we arrived in Avila on a glorious, partly sunny Sunday, and awoke Monday to an overcast but dry day (after only a pinprick mist overnight), we were disappointed to learn from a phone recording that the hike had been canceled "due to rain." Trail manager Sally Krenn later reported that the serpentine trail can get treacherous after heavy rains, and they'd had a deluge the day before.

But the scrapping of the hike just meant more time on the bikes. Which, in turn, inspired a visit to Sycamore Mineral Springs Resort in the evening.

The hotel, which nestles in the canyon between Avila Beach and Highway 101, taps into a spring in the hillside that has been gurgling forth hot, restorative waters since its discovery by wildcat oil men a century ago. Fortunately, you don't have to be a guest here to enjoy a good soak.

More than a dozen hot tubs cling to a steep, oak-studded hillside, shielded by redwood screens and reached by low-lit stairways and paths. The tubs may be rented by visitors ($30 per couple for the first hour), and with the stars peeking through the oak canopy, they provide an ideal way to wind down from an active day.

The next day in Avila Beach's retail district, it was clear that the recovery is still a work in progress. (After all the troubles with the oil spill, some projects were held up because a leaky town water tank delayed the issuance of permits.) Construction is under way everywhere, but it's all expected to wrap up in another six months to a year.

In the meantime, there are quite a few gems to be found here. Avila Grocery, with its excellent coffee, hot lunchtime sandwiches and extensive selection of local wines, should not be missed. The Under the Sea Gallery has art glass, wind chimes and beach-themed decorative items for home and garden. The Sea Barn stocks beach gear -- and rents bikes and boogie boards. Gelato Americano will tempt you with its exotic flavors in the late afternoon.

Another delight is Avila Wine & Roasting Co., a wine-tasting bar operated by a moonlighting Cal Poly professor, Kelly Moreno. He has an absolute passion for San Luis Obispo County bottlings, and pours such tiny winemakers as Linne Calodo and L'Aventure of Paso Robles. Buy a bottle here and a number of local restaurants will waive their corkage fee at dinner.

These and other businesses operate along the waterfront in an absolute jumble of architectural designs.

"We came up with a civic plan based on community meetings," said Kidd, who operates two hotels here, the Inn at Avila Beach and La Fonda. "One of the things in the plan was that Avila remain eclectic, as opposed to a planned community like Santa Barbara, where everything is Spanish Colonial."

Here, randomness is being factored into new construction. We noticed this at the Ocean 17 residences a block from the beach. Colors range from sea foam green to pale lavender to ochre, with the roof of one dormer curved, the next flat, the next peaked. Rudy Bachman, president of Specialty Construction, came up with that idea, and also oversaw the restoration of the Avila Grocery.

"I grew up in San Luis Obispo," he said. "As a kid I went to Avila Beach in the summer, and ran across barefoot to the grocery store to buy Cokes and ice cream. I'm just a local guy. We're builders. We just love the special uniqueness of Avila."

It still is special and unique. Avila Beach, given a chance to start all over again, was leveled, reconsidered and reborn -- as the same pleasing hodgepodge that it had always been.

[e-mail]

[phone]

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: Avila Beach is about 200 miles north of Los Angeles via U.S. 101, between Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo. Its exits are well-marked.

LODGING: We got awfully comfortable at the Avila Lighthouse Suites. The Cape Cod complex forms a "U" around its pool, in a superb location -- on Front Street, with views out over Avila Beach. There are tasteful nautical touches in the rooms, including lifeguard tower lamps, hanging light fixtures that resemble lighthouse keeper's lanterns, sailing themes in the print of the curtains, bold stripes in the shower curtains, and sand-colored floor tiles. An extensive buffet breakfast is included in the room rate. But the best attribute of most of the rooms is the sound of crashing surf as you nod off to sleep. Published rates from $299 in summer, lower in winter. www.avilalighthousesuites.com; [phone]. Other commendable options include: the Inn at Avila Beach (www.avilabeachca.com), La Fonda (www.avilalafonda.com) and, a couple of miles inland, Sycamore Mineral Springs Resort (www. sycamoresprings.com).

DINING: We weren't particularly impressed with the dinner options in Avila Beach. In town, the Custom House was found to be no more elegant than a sports bar. And, when I complained that most of the clams in our pot of steamers hadn't opened, the waitress confessed to a "dirty, little secret": The clams are frozen, not fresh. The Olde Port Inn, at the end of the Port San Luis pier, has great views but suffocating preparations for its fresh catch. The Gardens of Avila, at the Sycamore Springs resort, has a good reputation for its dishes, but we've always found the service to be abysmal. Lunch, by contrast, is an absolute treat in Avila Beach -- try Fat Cat's Cafe, near the foot of the Port San Luis pier, or Avila Grocery in town.

PECHO COAST TRAIL: Free, guided hikes are offered periodically to Point San Luis Lighthouse -- a seven-mile round trip. To ascertain dates of the hikes and make a reservation, call [phone].

INFORMATION: The Web site of the San Luis Obispo County Visitors & Conference Bureau is www.sanluisobispocounty.com. Under some categories (lodging, dining, etc.), you'll have the option of specifying a location. Scroll down to Avila Beach and hit "Begin Search." By phone: [phone] or [phone].

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box, map

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- color) Above, a walk on the wood-plank pier is a popular undertaking at Avila Beach. Top, Front Street is closed to vehicles for one block along the waterfront, and the buildings, though new, were constructed with contrasting designs rather than conforming to a particular theme. Inset, a starfish clings to a rock at the south end of the beach.

(4) A bridge crosses Avila Creek to accommodate bicyclists on the Bob Jones Bike Trail. The bikes-only route follows the creek on a 3-mile run between Avila Beach and Highway 101. Bicyclists can enjoy the scenery beneath a shady canopy of trees.

(5) Tile inlaid in wavelike swirls lends character to the waterfront at Avila Beach, one block of which is pedestrian-only. The town has made a gradual but impressive rebound from a cleanup of an underground oil spill.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

Box:

IF YOU GO (see text)

Map:

AVILA BEACH

Staff Graphic