Should New Park Celebrate Henry Rispin?: Mayor Seeks Input After

COMMUNITY NEWS Should New Park Celebrate Henry Rispin? 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.

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.

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.”

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