SLO County businesses ‘lost their livelihood’ when Hearst Castle closed. Can they survive?
When some North Coast entrepreneurs learned that Hearst Castle in San Simeon might have to stay closed for months, even after coronavirus pandemic restrictions are lifted, it was like a blow to the fiscal solar plexus.
That was especially true for people such as Theresa and Miguel de Alba, who own Manta Rey Restaurant; Evelyn Morales, owner of El Chorlito Restaurant, and Fidel Figueroa who co-manages San Simeon Beach Bar & Grill and San Simeon Lodge. They’re among those fighting for economic survival in the tiny, tourist-dependent business community of San Simeon.
It’s been a long, tough couple of years in San Simeon, due to economic impacts from wildfires, restrictions designed to slow the spread of COVID-19, the closure of Hearst Castle and fierce winter weather.
A late January storm dumped 17 inches of rain on the area, triggering a debris flow from the 2020 Dolan Fire burn scar. The resulting mudslide, which sent a 150-foot chunk of pavement and supporting cliffside plummeting into the Pacific Ocean, closed Highway 1 for nearly three months.
Repairs on the roadway were completed more than two months ahead of the original estimate of July, and Highway 1 reopened on April 23.
But storm damage to a different roadway will likely delay the Castle from reopening, even after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
Damage to the 5-mile access road between the visitor center and the hilltop state historical monument makes it potentially unsafe to drive the heavy tour buses up and down that roadway, the officials say, and analyzing studies of the problem could take months, with repairs requiring even more time.
Immediately after news of Hearst Castle’s extended closure broke April 8, Theresa de Alba and others took to social media to plead for help from others in pressuring State Parks to reopen the Castle as soon as possible.
Dan Falat, superintendent of the state park district that includes Hearst Castle, has repeatedly stressed that he, too, fervently wants the Castle to reopen as soon as possible — and as soon as it’s safe for the public and his staff to use the access road, which has been there since the 1920s.
But San Simeon entrepreneurs say they’re fighting for their businesses’ very existence.
Figueroa told The Cambrian that “85% of business in San Simeon is because of Hearst Castle.”
“Hopefully, the government can do something for us” to get the monument open sooner, he added, noting how Caltrans was able to reopen Highway 1 much earlier than anticipated.
At one point during the coronavirus pandemic, Figueroa said, San Simeon Lodge’s business was down about 50%.
After countywide and statewide stay-at-home orders lifted and the motel was allowed to reopen, “the weekends were good,” Figueroa said, “but Sunday through Thursday, we were lucky to rent eight rooms out of our 60.”
Business at the attached restaurant was down about 45%, he said.
Now that eateries are once again allowed to seat patrons inside, albeit at a reduced capacity, Figueroa added, “We’re struggling to find employees. … We don’t have many.”
During the closures and reductions of staff, “some of the employees moved back to Mexico,” Figueroa said, “because they don’t have to pay rent down there.”
Morales can’t manage El Chorlito Restaurant by herself anymore because of health issues, she said. She ran the Mexican restaurant for decades with husband Bob Morales, who died in 2020.
It’s now managed by granddaughter Aubrey Williams and her husband, Chad Williams, but Morales still keeps tabs on it.
Morales said tourism is the lifeblood for her restaurant.
She said it’s “amazing how many people in Cambria don’t even know we exist out here.”
“A lot of Cambrians came out here to eat when we first opened up 42 years ago,” she added, but now “five miles north is too far for them to travel, because that’s not a direction they’re heading in.”
The small town isn’t a destination on its own, she said, the way Cambria and Big Sur are, she said.
Having the Castle open is “very vital” to El Chorlito and other San Simeon businesses, she said, because “it attracts the tourists who stay in the motels and eat at the restaurants.”
“San Simeon needs the tourists stopping by,” Morales said. “We get calls all the time from people wanting to know if they can still get to San Simeon and Hearst Castle.”
“Small businesses and all those employed by those small businesses have lost their livelihood,” Theresa de Alba wrote in an email. “We don’t know if we can survive another summer with the Castle closed.”
The de Albas and others have been taking their cause to Falat, telling him about the urgency of the issue from the vantage point of businesses who desperately need the monument to reopen soon.
In her letter to Falat, Theresa de Alba wrote that “this year has been tough for everyone, but the closure of the Hearst Castle has been especially rough for us business owners in San Simeon (who) are struggling to keep our doors open.”
“I have been in operation here in San Simeon for over 16 years, and never in my time (here have I) quite seen anything like what we have experienced over the past year,” she wrote.
“(Manta Rey) used to be a lively and vibrant restaurant full of tourists from all over the world, the country and California,” de Alba wrote. “Now we have nights where we don’t even have one customer. And while I tried to maintain my staff with funds from federal assistance programs, my waitstaff has all quit, finding jobs in nearby Cambria, which seems to be booming.”
In fact, on April 21, Miguel de Alba was doing triple duty at the restaurant, working as sole server and bartender while training new employees in the kitchen.
“I realize the task of re-opening the Castle is very difficult with all the current COVID-19 restrictions,” Theresa de Alba continued in her letter to Falat. “However, with announcement from the governor that all restrictions will be lifted on June 15, I would hope that it would now be possible for the Hearst Castle to begin a process of re-opening.”
She also asked Falat to make more information available to the community’s business owners about the Castle’s reopening, details about “the situation with the re-opening of the Hearst Castle,” she said, so they can make informed decisions about their businesses.
