"This is not a subdued museum," Dick Metz told the Orange County Register on opening day. Metz is 97 and founded the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center. He was standing in a brick building between Broadway and Ocean Avenue that most of downtown Laguna had walked past for years without going in.
That line describes how the building was designed. SHACC moved downtown with free admission, a parking lot of its own, a bar, a theater screen sized for live surf contests and an upstairs library open to the public. Taken together, those choices make it the one place in the Village built for a local to drop into on a Tuesday afternoon for twenty minutes and come back the next week. It opened to the public the weekend of September 19 and then spent October 17 through 25 open only to Coast Film Festival ticket holders. Tuesday, October 27, began its first full week of regular hours since the festival ended.
A Building That Waited for the Right Tenant
The building went up in 1939. According to the Orange County Register's escrow report, it was a Sprouse-Reitz store in the 1940s, then a drug store for years, and then it sat empty for several years with a bank using a small corner. The bank is staying.
The building wasn't for sale. Mark Christy, a Laguna Beach preservationist on SHACC's board, saw that it was for rent and asked the owners whether they would sell. The same Register report says Christy had tried to buy it about 15 years earlier for an entertainment and music venue, and the owners said no. They agreed once the plan was a surf museum.
Escrow closed on Monday, December 15, 2025, and demolition crews started the next day. Laurie Alter of Tuvalu, the Laguna furnishings company, led the design. The building was gutted and its floors and walls were replaced. The brick walls and the wooden beams across 30-foot ceilings stayed.
Those ceilings were why SHACC wanted the space. Early 1900s wooden boards are huge, and the collection needs room to stand them up. The total footprint is about 12,000 square feet, with roughly 9,500 downstairs for exhibits and events.
Twenty Years Out of Sight
The move matters because of where the collection used to be. SHACC spent about two decades in an industrial building in the San Clemente hills, roughly 2.5 miles from the beach, and much of its history stayed out of public view, as the Laguna Beach Independent reported. A move to Dana Point Harbor was discussed at one point, but that partnership didn't come together.
For Metz, it's a homecoming. He grew up in Laguna Beach and started surfing and lifeguarding at Main Beach, a short walk from the new front door. "Everything about it is a perfect spot, you can almost throw a rock into the ocean," he told the Register when escrow closed.
He told the Register what stood out to him on opening day, and the ocean was only part of it. "To have a parking lot in downtown Laguna, is beyond," he said. In the Village, a museum with its own lot changes how often people can realistically go.
The Perimeter Walk, in Order
SHACC is laid out so a visitor can do one lap and leave, or spend an hour. Chris Mauro, a former Surfer magazine editor and one of SHACC's historians, described the outer wall to the Laguna Beach Independent this way: "You take the perimeter trip through time. That's your time capsule."
The lap follows board materials:
- Hawaii, where the sport began
- Redwood and pine
- Balsa
- Foam
- The boards people ride today
The center floor has three rows. One covers competition and athletes, one covers surf shops, fashion, movies and music, and one covers waves and oceanography. Metz told the Register those center exhibits are portable and can be tucked away, so the gallery floor doubles as an event floor that holds up to 400 people for weddings, corporate meetings and events.
There's also an interactive exhibit called the Stoke Machine. Filmmaker Greg MacGillivray was photographed trying it at the September 18 VIP opening.
The Boards Worth a Second Look
Founder Dick Metz says eight surfboards are known to have been made or ridden by Duke Kahanamoku. One went to the Smithsonian, one stayed in Australia and one is in Waikiki. The other five are on Ocean Avenue. "These are the crown jewels," Metz told the Laguna Beach Independent.
Two of the five have a local connection. Board member Randy Hild told the Orange County Register that two were shaped in Corona del Mar when Kahanamoku visited Southern California. Four Duke boards hang on either side of a flat screen 10 feet wide and 16 feet tall. On opening day that screen was streaming the Lexus Trestles Pro final heats from just south of San Clemente.
The first rotating exhibit, "PAE KA NALU: Catch the Wave," covers ancient Hawaiian surfing, the roughly 1,000 years before the sport reached California. Mauro said he spent five years researching it with Hawaiian historians.
"Our exhibit is really a big thank you to Hawaii for giving us this sport." Chris Mauro, speaking to the Laguna Beach Independent
SHACC hasn't posted an end date for the exhibit. The exhibit page is the place to check before it rotates out.
Upstairs, the Room Most Visitors Will Miss
The second floor has a conference room and library that the Register reported is open to the public, with every issue of Surfer and Surfing magazines on the shelves. Hild showed the paper the first magazine article ever written about surfing, Tom Blake's piece in the May 1935 National Geographic. Blake was a friend of Kahanamoku.
Deeper research works differently. In-person research in the archive is by appointment, and you can request scans and reproductions of most materials remotely through SHACC's archive page. If you want to see a specific photograph or film, plan ahead. If you just want to sit with an old magazine, go upstairs.
Fitting It Into a Regular Week
These details are what make SHACC easy to visit often:
- Admission: Free
- Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays. SHACC notes that hours can change for holidays and private events.
- Parking and entrance: 232 Ocean Ave.
- Bus: OCTA Route 1 stops at Broadway and PCH, two blocks away.
- Trolley: The City's off-season schedule began September 8. The free Coastal Route runs daily every 20 to 30 minutes, according to the City of Laguna Beach trolley page.
- Bikes: Racks at the front entrance
The first public event after the film festival is a Jeff Divine book launch on Thursday, October 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the SHACC Theater. That's the first evening when the room works the way Metz described it, with the exhibits as the backdrop for a crowd. Members get priority access to live programs, and programs are open to the public unless noted. Check the What's On calendar before you go.
The Rest of the Ocean Avenue Block
SHACC also adds to a short walk that's been filling in all fall. A block up, at 374 Ocean Ave., the LCAD Gallery has its free exhibition "Subversive Encryptions: The Manuscripts of Gonza Spalato" through November 15. The new Forest Avenue promenade, which the Laguna Beach Independent reported was dedicated September 25, is a few minutes away.
In early November, Laguna Art Museum holds its Art + Nature Celebration Week, November 1 through 9, with outdoor art and free events, including Kim Manfredi's "A Flag Walk for Our Future" from November 5 to 9. Sawdust Winter Fantasy follows with five Friday-through-Sunday weekends from November 20 to December 20. If you followed our shoulder-season guide, SHACC is a new stop to add to that list, and unlike the festivals it's open six days a week all year.
At Carter Kaufman Team, we track what changes on the blocks around our clients' homes, from a 1939 dime store building with a new tenant to the next storefront that changes hands. For a perspective on what downtown changes like this mean for your corner of Laguna Beach, book an appointment with our team.
