After sitting vacant for decades high above Soquel Creek, Capitola’s Rispin Mansion is being repurposed at last, as a public park. While the building itself is currently entombed, or sealed off, to prevent further deterioration, the city has embarked on a project to transform the surrounding grounds into a new public park.
Among its features, the park will gain an amphitheater, picnic tables and fountain, according to Jessica Kahn, Capitola’s public works director. “It’s definitely going to be one of our more passive parks, a quiet, reflecting, peaceful place.” In other words, no play structures are being installed.
Completed in 1921, the Rispin Mansion has served many uses over the past century, including the home of the Rispin family, a convent and most recently, the set for a television show. The mansion was featured in May on the Discovery+ show Ghost Adventures and includes a segment with Deborah Osterberg and Carolyn Swift of the Capitola History Museum.
After years of vandalism, theft and a fire in 2010, the mansion has seen a flurry of activity this summer including plumbing, masonry and electrical restoration. New wrought-iron fencing was added in 2024 to line the property and provide better security. Construction crews installed water pipes and electrical wiring last fall. But then, eucalyptus trees and utility issues temporarily halted the project.
“We had a bit of a hangup with PG&E,” Kahn said. “We ended up removing one of the power poles there.” That area is now free and clear, she said.
On June 4, Triad Electrical was onsite installing lights, while a new walkway, amphitheater seating and ornately restored banisters are all proceeding on schedule, according to Kahn.
“There’s been a lot of restraint work with the fountain and the railing work,” Kahn said. “They had to take ones that were still in good condition and recast them.” A stairway has been redone into its original state, she added.
An amphitheater is the intended public use when construction is finished. Though Kahn doesn’t “anticipate the city programming any activities,” she added, “We do plan on holding an opening event later this summer.”
Since the city already has an existing policy of renting out other park spaces, Kahn anticipates this park being used for private events as well. “You get a great view from the library,” said Osterberg, curator of Capitola Historical Museum for the past four years. “I definitely see myself doing programs here.”
Voter Funding
The city has been holding onto funds to make this into a public park for quite some time. Under Proposition 68, every city got formula funds based on population, with Capitola receiving about $144,000 in state funding, according to Kahn. “It is partially funded by the State Parks,” she said.
Voter-approved initiatives contributed additional funds: Measure L, which protects the rail corridor, a Proposition 68 grant of $178,000 and $50,000 in Measure Q funding, which voters passed in 2024 for fiscal year 2025-26.
Measure Q is an investment in parks and public spaces, as Capitola Mayor Joe Clarke stated in his Mayor’s Message, published May 17 in the Sentinel: “This voter-approved initiative provides $200,000 annually to the city of Capitola, specifically earmarked for parks, open spaces and public improvements.” Contracts were awarded to local contractors Betz Works (formerly Earthworks), Triad Electric Inc. and Diamond D Concrete.
The project meets Capitola Municipal Code 8.72, the Greenway Capitola Corridor, which also calls for preservation of the historic Capitola Trestle. Exhibit panels have yet to be installed.
Local Landmark
An eclectic combination of Mission, Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean architecture, the Rispin Mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to records from the Capitola Historical Museum, Canadian-born entrepreneur Henry Allen Rispin built the mansion between 1919 and 1921 as a sort of demonstration home/example for developing Capitola as a resort. Rispin lived in the three-story, 9,000-square-foot, 22-room estate with his wife and son in the early 1920s.
“The imprint from Rispin’s time here is why Capitola looks the way it does today,” Osterberg said. “Rispin is responsible for much of the initial paving of the village.” He also curved the Esplanade, Osterberg explained. “That’s why the Six Sisters’ lawns are so long,” she said.
By the end of the decade, Rispin suffered a series of misfortunes and lost all his investments to creditors. In 1941, the mansion was sold for $90,000 to St. Joseph’s Monastery for use by the Poor Clares, a cloistered order of nuns. The Poor Clares lived in the mansion until 1959. Rispin died in 1947 and is buried in a pauper’s grave in Olivet Cemetery in Colma, California.
