Santa Ana : Ace Muffler Can Stay, City Manager Says

Ace Muffler, the East 1st Street automotive shop the city has been trying to move for more than a year, will be allowed to stay at its present location, even if a shopping center is built on the land surrounding the site, City Manager Robert C. Bobb said Friday.

Bobb’s pledge came at a breakfast meeting of Los Amigos de Santa Ana, a Latino business group. Later in the day, Bobb confirmed the announcement, saying the City Council had decided the shop will not have to move.

“Ace will stay at its present location,” Bobb said. “If the neighborhood shopping center is to be constructed by Urbatec, Ace must be included in the development.”

Miguel Angel Pulido, one of the Pulido children who, with their father, owns the shop, said Bobb’s announcement “sounds very, very good. We’re pleased. Maybe this is the last chapter, but it’s a good chapter. We’re happy.”

The dispute over Ace Muffler began when the city announced plans to build the shopping center on an eight-acre redevelopment site bordered by 1st, 3rd and Spurgeon streets and by an extension of Maple Street. Owner Miguel Armando Pulido was told last February that having Ace Muffler included in the redevelopment would be incompatible with the shopping center and that the business would have to move.

The decision came as Pulido and his sons were putting the final touches on a new shop they had been required to build when a street-widening project forced the razing of the original Ace Muffler building.

“Enough is enough,” Pulido said in February, and he decided to fight City Hall. Pulido, 59, an immigrant from Mexico City, has owned the thriving business for 15 years. Before he bought it, he had worked for 10 years for the previous owner.

In June, the City Council voted to proceed with the shopping center development and decided that the muffler shop would have to go.

Little by little, however, Pulido began to pick up support in the community. He filed two lawsuits against the city, and with the help of former Rep. Jerry Patterson (D-Garden Grove), a federal investigation was launched into the methods the city used to finance the development.

On Friday, Bobb said, “The bottom line is that the City Council is unanimous in its viewpoint that Ace will remain. If a neighborhood shopping center is to be constructed, it has to be with Ace remaining in place.”

“Certainly, the City Council’s being unanimous is a great sign,” Pulido said Friday evening. “It’s been so long, we’re a little numb.”