City's last Bed & Breakfast bids farewell City's last Bed & Breakfast bids farewell (October 01, 2004)

3,000 stayed at Longview Drive lodge
by Jeb Bing

Hundreds of travelers who have been coming to Pleasanton for years to enjoy the warmth of the city and its Evergreen Bed and Breakfast on the hills overlooking downtown will soon find their stay changed significantly.

Jane and Clay Cameron have put their popular 6,200-square-foot home on the market so that they, too, can enjoy traveling and spending more time with their five children and 10 grandchildren.

Guests, of course, are still invited until the sale goes through, and many have placed reservations for a final goodbye. But farewells won't come easy for either those from California and other parts of the country, as well as a few foreign countries who have made Evergreen their home away from home.

Some are regulars, including one businesswoman who has come at least once a month. Others are married couples who spent their wedding night at the Evergreen, located midway up Longview Drive in the Ridgeland hills. Many others stay there while visiting their children who live in Pleasanton, or while on business trips to nearby corporate centers.

"We are truly sad to be closing the only remaining bed and breakfast in Pleasanton," Jane Cameron said. "Some who have been coming here regularly over the years tell us that they don't know what they'll do, if they'll ever come back."

But at 65, Jane and her husband Clay, 64, believe it's time to call it quits. Operating a bed and breakfast can be grueling.

"You get up at 5:30 day after day, get the breakfast ready, greet the guests and then see them off as they go to their jobs or vacation destinations," Clay Cameron said. "We almost always have someone here, so it's a rare opportunity when we can take a night off and go to Main Street for dinner, which we truly enjoy."

The Camerons were married on the pie-shaped, 1-1/4-acre lot in 1981, where an air traffic controller, who had just been fired as part of President Reagan's wholesale dismissal of the striking controllers, could no longer pay for the property. He had poured a foundation for a house, but the Camerons didn't like the home design. In 1985, they approved their own architect's plans for a uniquely styled, multi-story residence with six bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths and other rooms that opened onto decks and landscaped gardens. With their youngest son heading off to college, the huge family home that took three years to complete was more space than the Camerons needed.

Seeing how others had turned their homes into B&Bs, they remodeled their own home, completing the conversion for their first guests in 1995. More than 3,000 have stayed there since.

"This isn't like a hotel where you have to read the local paper to find out what city you're in," Clay Cameron said. "There, people like their privacy and seldom talk to each other. At Evergreen, all bets are off. Everybody talks to everybody and we often keep in touch."

Because the B&B is small with only five guest rooms, the Camerons have found that even with a full house, it's not much different than having their five children and their families over for the night. Although they enjoy children, they have limited guests to those who are adults, and they also don't have their own grandchildren visit when guests are there.

"We have couples who are spending their honeymoon night with us, so we feel that it's not the time to have children playing on the floors," Jane Cameron said.

Even though the Evergreen B&B has prospered, the recent economic downturn has taken its toll. During the heydays of the dot.com boom in the late 1990s, the guest register was filled almost every night. As the economy faded, so did the number of visitors, especially those who traveled to local businesses such as PeopleSoft, Safeway, ChevronTexaco and PacBell. Although housekeeping and guest services stayed the same, only a few were coming, and profits dipped. The Camerons say that wasn't the reason to check out, but clearly the amount of work for a diminishing number of guests took its toll.

Leaving Pleasanton will be as difficult as selling the Evergreen, Jane Cameron said. She's lived here since 1971, at one time owning and operating the Natural Trading Company in Mission Plaza on Santa Rita Road. Clay Cameron has lived in Pleasanton since 1967. His children, Chris and Janis Cameron, are Foothill High School graduates; hers, Bryan, Ian and Todd Kaminsky, graduated from Amador.

On the market and listed for $2.5 million by Realtor Rosie Yandell of Prudential California Realty, the bed and breakfast is being offered as a single family home again, although a B&B is still a permitted use and new owners could continue the business. When sold, the Camerons plan to hitch their Airstream trailer to their truck and head for Aptos to find a permanent residence, and then on the road to see their children.

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