Hop in your car. Roll down the windows. And cruise south down state Highway 39 toward the Pacific Ocean.

As you travel along the eastern edge of north Orange County – particularly through Buena Park, Anaheim and Stanton – you’ll notice remnants of mid-century Southern California, when cars with tailfins dominated, and freeways were not yet part of the region’s identity.

You’ll pass decades-old motels, with tall, neon signs illuminating exotic names meant to lure traveling salesmen and tourists: the Sahara, the Moonlight, the Jade Palace. Also: car dealerships, auto shops, fast food chains and the occasional bar.

And there’s Knott’s Berry Farm, the heart of Highway 39:

Welcome to Beach Boulevard.

“It’s been the center of Southern California for years,” said Terry Cutler, 57, whose parents moved to Stanton in 1968, when he was 8 years old.

Beach Boulevard, to Orange County residents of a certain age, is an old friend: “Orange County grew out from it.”

But Beach is past its prime. Many of the motels are rundown. Land and stores are vacant.

Beach’s descent into economic stagnation, said Buena Park Councilman Fred Smith, “Started in the ‘70s, got really bad in the ‘80s and was unbearable going into the ‘90s.”

But now, Beach is under the knife. Buena Park, Anaheim and Stanton have gained momentum revamping their stretches of the boulevard, buying up trashy motels, luring innovative developers, repaving asphalt and offering incentives to get businesses to remodel.

In short, local officials want to give Beach a second heyday.

“It’s already changed a lot,” said Naresh Patel, 65, who has owned the Sahara Motel since 2000. “There used to be a lot of crime, drug users and prostitution. Improving the area will only help.”

Pre-freeway idyll

Highway 39, linked in 1934 to connect north Los Angeles County to southeast Orange County, was an idyllic scene for motorists in pre-suburban Orange County; 50 miles of thoroughfare banding together cities that now have little else in common.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the rains came, the boulevard flooded and kids floated on homemade rafts. Teens bummed rides to the beach.

Knott’s grew and shined – but the roadway leading to it became littered with potholes; junked cars lined the boulevard. Rents went up, and families that couldn’t make ends meet traded apartments for Beach Boulevard motel rooms.

“My mom talks about cruising Beach when she was younger,” said Roy Hendricks, 36, a Buena Park lifer. “But it’s not like that anymore.”

Hendricks, sitting after work on a barstool in Cups, said he gets nervous when his daughter is out and about. Nearby alleys still host addicts.

“But I’m glad to see it’s changing,” he said. Finally.

Buena Park purchased and demolished many of the budget motels, with plans to rebuild. In 2012, as the country was climbing out of the Great Recession, the city began selling those lots to developers.

The plan, Economic Director Ruben Lopez said, was to refresh Buena Park’s entertainment corridor, offering a bite or nightcap for folks leaving Medieval Times or Pirate’s Dinner Adventure.

One of the first businesses to buy-in was Rock & Brews, the food-and-beer chain launched by two members of the rock band KISS.

Then came adjacent Porto’s Bakery & Cafe, a renowned Cuban franchise known for savory food and lines like you wouldn’t believe.

At Beach and Orangethorpe Avenue is the city’s greatest investment in its entertainment corridor: The Source, a $325 million, 500,000-square-foot entertainment complex with a cutting-edge movie theater, fine-dining restaurants and upscale shops.

“It’s a neat corridor,” said Jim Vanderpool, Buena Park city manager. “It’s great that it’s getting the attention it deserves.”

Ian Taylor, who opened a baseball card shop a mile south of Knott’s 25 years ago, and remembers well the corridor’s seediness, agrees.

“I think what the city has done over the past few years is impressive,” Taylor said. “They’ve made Buena Park a place people have no problem coming to or visiting.”

The future is coming

And more is in the planning.

“When we first moved in, it was bad,” said Larry Schurtz, 55, who works at Lucky John’s and shacked up at the Tahiti Motel with his wife, Annie, about 5 years ago. “But the manager cleaned it up. He kicked out the drug users and the prostitutes.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols for the city of Stanton, played a role in that as well, he said.

Stanton officials had wanted to improve their stretch of Beach for years. But as a city of fewer than 40,000 residents, and with an older population, Stanton was hit hard by the recession.

Shops boarded up, whole strip malls looked like ghost towns.

But then the economy improved, Stanton voters added a 1 cent sales tax to right the budget, and the City Council approved business rebates to encourage investment. Street improvements are ongoing.

A much-anticipated Del Taco opened Sept. 5. A Wendy’s is coming to town, as is a Starbucks. A mixed-use project at Beach and Catherine Avenue will feature a small cafe, a medical clinic and an assisted-living place.

And city officials are eagerly awaiting the development of an abandoned shopping center at Beach and Garden Grove boulevards, vacant for about a decade, but now on the verge of becoming another mixed-use plaza.

Jim Box, Stanton’s city manager, envisions Beach becoming an attraction beaming with “shops, people shopping, people eating, living.”

“I see all the core values of daily life occurring on Beach Boulevard.”

Hotel redevelopment

Naresh Patel bought the 39-room Sahara Motel, at Beach and Ball Road in Anaheim, 17 years ago as a retirement property – a place he and his wife could live while also earning enough money to pay for his son’s medical-school tuition.

It was tough at first.

“I had to clean it up,” Patel said. Maids would find needles in the rooms. Women would rent a place, and then men would come-and-go throughout the day. The cops were never far away.

“Next time they’d ask for a room,” Patel said, “I’d be polite. But I’d tell them we had no rooms for them.”

In Anaheim, only four of the 18 motels along Beach serve tourists, officials estimate. They are, instead, short- and long-term solutions for those seeking shelter, often drawing illicit behavior.

But teamwork, and some tough love by the cities, has led to improvements.

In 2012, Anaheim residents and business owners partnered with police to brainstorm solutions. Area motel owners banded together, forming “The 39ers,” to overhaul the quality of their properties and clientele.

One hub of police activity, the old Lyndy’s Motel, was torn down in early March. Property owner Jeremy Levine plans to construct a state-of-the-art car wash on the 1-acre lot.

“We really believe in the redevelopment of this area,” Levine told the Register at the time. “We were looking for a great location with high traffic, a large population density and no competition within three miles. This is it.”

A 25-acre quarry-turned-landfill, known as the Sinkin’ Lincoln, dormant for years because a settling problem needed fixing, now has a buyer envisioning a 270,000-square-foot retail center, plus restaurants, shops and a public plaza.

Across Lincoln, next to the West Anaheim Youth Center, the 44-room Americana Motel – used primarily for sober living residents – is in the city’s sights for new housing, with some affordable residential units and shops.

“We want to make a big splash,” said Councilwoman Denise Barnes.

“We see what Buena Park is doing and what Stanton is proposing,” she said. “We want to merge with those two cities and hopefully create a continuing and exciting look along Beach Boulevard.”

In the works

Residents of all three cities could soon get their wish.

In Buena Park, a $25 million butterfly pavilion is planned for the vacant lot once filled by Movieland Wax Museum.

The boutique chain Hotel Stanford is investing $34 million into a 10-story location. A $24 million Aloft Hotel is building across Beach.

Stanton officials believe their city’s newest gem, the 11.5-acre Stanton Central Park just off Beach, will bring added traffic to drive business through their stretch of the boulevard.

Anaheim wants its Beach to be a haven for locals; it doesn’t need another tourist resort.

Officials from Beach Boulevard cities have been meeting every two months to ensure the road, while fulfilling different needs, can have a rebirth.

“No one’s ever really worked together,” Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said, “and thought about Beach Boulevard as an entity that we could create value around.”

They also brought Caltrans into the discussion – the agency controls state routes – and that came with state grants to improve the area’s walkability.

With marketable amenities such as Knott’s Berry Farm on its Inland leg and the ocean at the other end, Tait called Beach Boulevard low-hanging fruit.

“Here you have this iconic named street that goes directly to the ocean,” he said. “If you can’t make that a cool place to be, you’re not trying hard enough.”