Overview
About Old Town
Old Town is the original grid of Seal Beach, 150 acres of numbered streets running from First to Seventeenth between Pacific Coast Highway and the sand, crossed by Ocean Avenue, Seal Way, Electric Avenue and Main Street. The city's address layer records 2,776 homes on 1,342 parcels across 26 named streets and 10.17 miles of pavement, on a typical lot of 2,938 square feet, and 115 of those addresses carry a unit designator. All 150 acres sit inside the California Coastal Zone, and 106.5 of them carry RHD-20, the city's densest residential zone.
Seven city parks stand in the planning area, from Sunset Marina Park at 19.2 acres and Pacific Electric Park at 6.5 down to Windsurf Park at 0.4, alongside 52 acres of public beach at Seal Beach and Surfside. Main Street is the traditional commercial core of the city, governed by a specific plan the City Council adopted in 1996 covering allowed land uses, building and design provisions and parking; the city's stated goal is to keep visitor serving uses from overwhelming it at the expense of the small town character, and it acknowledges in the same document that when the weather and beach conditions are good the demand for parking may exceed the supply. Old Town is Council District 1, and the county's school district layer places all of it in Los Alamitos Unified.
View available homes in Old TownHistory
How Old Town was built
Electric Avenue is named for exactly what it sounds like. The Pacific Electric Railway's Newport to Balboa line opened on 4 July 1904 and ran down the middle of that street, stopping at Fifth Street and then at Anaheim Landing, and the greenbelt that runs through Old Town today is the old right of way. Passenger service dwindled to a single round trip a day by June 1940 and stopped on 18 November that year, revived briefly for the war and finished for good in 1950. The rest of the grid reads as a beach town should: numbered streets from First to Seventeenth, with Ocean, Marine, Neptune, Dolphin, Seal Way and Landing Avenue crossing them.
The town was invented twice. In 1903 the Los Angeles realtor Philip A. Stanton put together a syndicate to lay out a town he wanted to call Bayside, found the name taken by a place near Eureka, and settled on Bay City. In 1913 he optioned the land to the promoter Guy M. Rush, who built a new pier with pavilions on either side, renamed the whole thing Seal Beach after the seals on the sand, and sold it on postcards. The town incorporated in 1915, and the Joy Zone amusement park opened in 1916 as the first in Orange County.
By the Numbers
Old Town by the numbers
Lifestyle
The Old Town lifestyle
The city's Open Space Element lists Eisenhower Park at 1.4 acres, Marina Center and Park at 2.6, Zoeter Field at 1.9, Schooner Park at 0.8, Windsurf Park at 0.4, Pacific Electric Park at 6.5 and Sunset Marina Park at 19.2 acres in this planning area, with the public beaches at Seal Beach and Surfside at 52 acres between them. The city publishes Eisenhower Park at Ocean Avenue and Main Street and the Zoeter softball facility at Twelfth and Landing Avenue.
The city gives its beach as 1.5 miles running from First Street through Surfside, and describes its coastal beaches as wide and sandy with minimal vegetation coverage.
Schools
Schools serving Old Town
The county's published school district layer places Old Town entirely inside Los Alamitos Unified. The campuses below are that district's schools with enrollment from the federal count. Which campus a given address attends is set by the district's attendance boundaries, and the district does not publish those as a map, so confirm the assignment with the district before relying on it.
9-12 · 2,915 students
6-8 · 1,018 students
6-8 · 998 students
K-5 · 721 students
K-5 · 642 students
K-5 · 640 students
K-5 · 625 students
K-5 · 603 students
K-5 · 540 students
FAQs
Common questions about Old Town
How big is Old Town and how many homes are in it?
Measured against the boundary the City of Seal Beach draws on its own Residential Boundaries layer, Old Town covers 149.9 acres. The city's address layer records 2,776 addresses inside it and the parcel layer 1,342 parcels, with 10.17 miles of street across 26 named streets. The Land Use Element puts the whole planning area that holds Old Town at approximately 331 gross acres, running from the mouth of the San Gabriel River to Pacific Coast Highway and out to the ocean.
What kind of homes are in Old Town?
The city zones 106.5 acres RHD-20, its densest residential district, and the county assessor's typical parcel inside the boundary is 2,938 square feet, the second smallest of the eight areas the city maps. There are more addresses than parcels, 2,776 against 1,342, and 115 addresses carry a unit designator on the city's own record.
When was Old Town laid out?
The original map, Bay City, was surveyed by S.H. Finley and recorded in 1903. Stanton and Lothians First and Second Additions followed in 1904 and 1905, the Bay View Tract in 1913 and tracts 1, 2 and 10 in 1914. The city incorporated on October 25, 1915 and changed the name because a Bay City already existed in northern California.
What is on Main Street, and what about parking?
Main Street is the city's traditional commercial core, governed by the Main Street Specific Plan the City Council adopted in 1996 to set allowed land uses, building and design provisions and parking standards. The city states its goal as preventing visitor serving uses from overwhelming the street at the expense of the small town character, and acknowledges in the same document that when weather and beach conditions are attractive the demand for parking may exceed the supply.
Is Old Town in the coastal zone or a flood zone?
All 149.9 acres sit inside the California Coastal Zone as the city maps it, so coastal development permitting applies. The federal flood layer the city publishes places 143.4 acres in zone X, outside the mapped special flood hazard area, and 6.5 acres in zone VE, the coastal high hazard band along the beach front. Check the flood zone for a specific address before an offer.