In Old Town It’s Age That Counts : 40-Year-Old General Store in Park Looks Too New to Stay in Business

Long before Old Town became famous as a state park offering souvenirs and margarita specials to 4 million tourists a year, Wilhemina Manlo’s General Store stood in its heart at 2701 San Diego Ave.

Manlo and her husband, Sam, opened the store in 1946 and operated it together until his death in 1980. Since then, she has run the business with her two children and still lives in the small house behind the store. She is the only shopkeeper to reside within Old Town State Park.

But, like many long-lived “mom and pop” businesses, Manlo’s general store is living on borrowed time. It doesn’t risk being replaced by modern, shiny supermarkets, however. Rather, Manlo’s general store, old though it is, is still too modern for state Parks and Recreation Department officials.

Park officials have told Manlo that before she can renew her lease, which expires in February, she must agree to “demodernize” her store. To be considered an “interpretive” historical site, the store must conform to the park’s motif of San Diego, circa 1821. At her own expense, she will have to install wood floors, period wallpaper and “appropriate” shelving.

“They say I have to go to an interpretive period or they’ll put (the store) up for public bid,” said Manlo, 69. “I don’t think that after 40 years I should have to go to a public bid. Everything’s all modern--how can you go back and make it old?”

Edward Navarro, who as district supervisor for the state park system oversees Old Town concessions, said the state does not want Mrs. Manlo to lose her store. That’s why he has asked her to make her store qualify under Parks and Recreation Department criteria as an interpretive site.

“Right now, she has a general concession, which means that when her lease expires, she’ll have to go out to bid,” Navarro said. “What the department has suggested to her, because of her long tenure in the park, is to make some changes to make her store an interpretive concession.”

Navarro said Manlo will have to bear the expense for the required renovations, since the state only pays for work on designated historical sites.

“The store’s only 40 years old,” he said. “As far as it getting a nomination as an historical landmark, I don’t think it would fly.”

Although she is annoyed at having to pay for the renovations herself, Manlo said she is willing to make the changes. She just wants something in return--a 10-year lease.

“I’ve given every indication I’ll do whatever they want if they give me a substantive lease,” she said. “I just don’t feel I should go ahead until they agree to that. Without a long-term lease, you can only do so much.”

The general store has never had more than a five-year lease since 1968, when the area known by residents as “Old San Diego,” located about three miles northwest of downtown, was designated a state park to commemorate the bicentennial of San Diego’s founding.

“They determined they were going to make this a state park and they went around buying people’s property, even ours,” Manlo said. “They gave you a price and if you didn’t like it, you had to fight it in court. Otherwise, they took it by eminent domain.”

The loss of the property rankled Manlo and her husband, who had owned a business in San Diego since 1932, when he opened a produce stand on 12th Avenue. She would like to pass the general store on to her daughter, Alice Altier, and her son, Nicola Fiori.

But, according to Navarro, the most the state can give Manlo is a five-year lease, with an option for another five years. And, he said, under no circumstances could the concession be passed directly to her children, since the lease would be terminated upon her death.

“As far as the department’s concerned, she would be the only one on the lease,” Navarro said. “If she were to pass away, the process of going out to bid would have to start all over again . . . (The children) would have to bid like anyone else.”

This, says Manlo, is why she is reluctant to make the changes in her store.

“They offered me a lifetime lease,” she said. “At my age, who can say what a lifetime lease is?”

Navarro said the Park Department is sympathetic to Manlo’s concerns, but that the general store’s fate is sealed by the inexorable march toward realization of the park’s general plan, which requires that all “non-historical” buildings be demolished.

“At some point in time, the park’s general plan is going to call for historical reconstructions of the buildings that stood there originally,” Navarro said. “The department is not really in a place to make any exception. In a case like Willy’s store, we’re willing to wait a period of time. But at some point, that building is going to have to come down.”