Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California AL BOEKE OCEANIC PROPERTIES, VICE-PRESIDENT: THE SEA RANCH, 1959-69 Interviews conducted by Kathryn Smith in 2008 Copyright © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Al Boeke and Kathryn Smith, dated September 1, 2009. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Al Boeke, Oceanic Properties, Vice-President: The Sea Ranch, 1959-69, conducted by Kathryn Smith in 2008, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2010. Al Boeke, ca 1960s Al Boeke, May 2008 v • TABLE OF CONTENTS Outline of Topics vi Interview History vii Oral History 1 Selected References 133 About the Interviewer 134 Appendix: Curriculum Vitae; Design Awards, 1965-2005, The Sea Ranch 135 vi OUTLINE OF TOPICS Session One [WS310009.WMA] May 7, 2008 Capsule Biography—Scandinavian Tour to Employment at Bechtel—Search for a Proper Site— Discovers the Del Mar Ranch Session Two [WS310010.WMA] May 8, 2008 Meets with Owners—Investigation of Site—Option Period and Consultants Session Three [WS310011.WMA] May 9, 2008 Supervisors Meeting—Unit One—Demonstration Houses—Condominium One—Halprin & Associates—Plan for Multiple Condominiums—Design Review Committee—Matthew Sylvia— Budget—Real Estate Sales—Economic Recession—Proposition 20 Session Four [WS310013.WMA] May 11, 2008 Department of Real Estate, State of California—CC&R’S—Roads—Budgets—Marker Building—Air Strip—Underground Cable Session Five, part one [WS310014.WMA] May 12, 2008 Forest Clearing—Route #1 (State Involvement)—Hot Spot Road—Trails—Marion Conrad— Corporation Yard—Barn—Phase Two Session Five, part two [WS310015.WMA] May 12, 2008 North Recreation Center—Binker Barns—Halprin Terminated—Halprin’s Replacement—Rob Roy McCloud—Lou McClain—Richard Moore—Chinese Wall—Store/Restaurant Expansion into Lodge—Independent Coastal Observer—Boeke’s House on The Ranch Session Six, part one [WS310016.WMA] May 13, 2008 After the Bane Bill—Richardson Ranch and Abalone Divers—Proposition 20—Moratorium on Permits—Coastal Commission—Bane Bill—Park—Campground—Low-Cost Housing Session Six, part two [WS310017.WMA] May 13, 2008 Reservoir—Boeke Leaves and Returns—Reflections on History and Future of The Sea Ranch— The Sea Ranch Association Employees—Design Review Committee Evolution—Concerns for Future of The Sea Ranch vii Interview History Al Boeke was Vice-President, Oceanic Properties Inc., in charge of the creation, development, and implementation of The Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, California. This interview was conducted between May 7 and May 13, 2008 at his home, The Sea Ranch by Kathryn Smith. Smith is an architectural historian, whose specialization is Frank Lloyd Wright and California modern architects including R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Lloyd Wright. She has written numerous books and articles, lectured widely, and had been an employee of the Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles in the 1970s. 1 Session One [WS310009.WMA] May 7, 2008 SMITH: This is Kathryn Smith. Today I will be interviewing Al Boeke. This is May 7, 2008, and we are at his home in Unit 20, The Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, California. BOEKE: Would you like a drink of water? SMITH: I don’t need any water, thank you. BOEKE: Okay. SMITH: I know that you had a long and varied career before you started at Castle & Cooke, but I’d like to take up with when you joined that organization. BOEKE: Okay. Well, tell me when you . I’ll tell you when I’m ready to have you turn it on. SMITH: Oh, I already turned it on. BOEKE: Oh, you have? Okay. Okay, then I won’t tell the joke I was going to tell. SMITH: Oh. BOEKE: You want me to speak to the things that I did prior to Castle & Cooke that were a buildup to the New Town notion that I carried then to Castle & Cooke and Oceanic and applied to The Sea Ranch? SMITH: Okay. BOEKE: Okay. In the beginning I have read and thought a lot about the New Town idea, especially in Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, some in Scotland and a dash other places. Some of them in England. And just before the Castle & Cooke thing started, we – my wife and I – took a trip to Scandinavia and it was this trip that followed the path of about four or five professors from Penn State and they did a trip to those countries as a warm-up for taking a group of people who wanted to go – lay people – to the University. Mostly architects, planners and their wives and one teenage girl. There were about 19 of us and about five professors. They had gone there – gone to Sweden especially, and talked to local government, state government, who does all the planning and all the construction and had an incredible background and an itinerary that was really wonderful. So, the 19 of us, mostly from New England, with one Hawaiian, went to those countries and we were gone three weeks or more – four maybe -- at which time we visited each New Town and, in order, talked to the government arms to get their philosophy and their thoughts. And their government arms there are not people whose job it is to look at something that the private community brings to them and they say “yea” or “nay,” but to join private community and investors in the organized creation of a New Town idea. So it starts with the person with the deep pockets and the desire and coordinates with the government – the federal government – and the federal government does the planning and they march forward together and they start building and they build the – everything we saw was an extraordinary high level of 2 quality of building – you can rationalize it by the cold climate, but just the same, very high level of quality and inspiring planning and architecture. Community design in the sense of an urban plan of designs that use – creates the views and plans with those views in the process and integrates the landscape – especially winter landscape – in enormous pots – the size of which you’ve never seen. No one has ever seen, except there – and they have gardens in pots and I don’t know what they look like in the winter time in the snow and the real cold, but in the summer they are just a variety of blooming things and they march along for a half a mile from the shopping center to the high school and from the high school to the grammar school and so forth, and so forth, all in an organized community. So, I came home from that with a conviction that my notion of trying to do New Towns, rather than design big and small buildings in the wilds of southern California and Metropolitan Los Angeles, even then, pretty chaotic, I felt was a valid idea and, so I kept that in mind and somehow the word spread. I spoke to a couple of chapters of AIA at different times and somehow the word spread and one day in the office in Studio City in Southern California, two men came to the door of my office and said we have just talked to your partner in the other room, Mr. Kinsey, and they authorized us to speak to you and make a proposal. And I said, “Welcome” to them and it turns out that one of them was the former Planning Director of the City and County of Honolulu, George Hofftailing, a man much younger than I am today but an older man and Don Rittow, a pineapple man from Dole Corporation and the Executive Secretary of Dole Corporation – the business guy. And we talked for about an hour about a variety of things and nothing specific and no proposals or anything and after about an hour they looked at each other and said, “Well, why don’t we take a break,” and they stood up and said, “We’d like to talk – we would like to talk to you again.” And I said, “okay” and “where, again, are you from? And what is your association?” and they described just what I described to you, briefly, identifying them.