Change of Heart : Caltrans to Look at Plans to Save Family Fun Center

The Family Fun Center of La Mesa, threatened with the prospect of having a freeway off-ramp cut through its property, has won a victory in a continuing battle with the California Department of Transportation.

Caltrans has agreed to study alternatives that would avoid closing the park, said Randall Mason, attorney for Huish Family Fun Centers. John Huish owns the 6.3-acre park on Fletcher Parkway, near Grossmont Center.

The park opened 27 years ago and, come Oct. 3, will have been open 9,984 consecutive days. Oct. 3 marks another milestone--the date the park was to close so Caltrans could begin construction. The park is a mecca for youths, who congregate at its miniature golf courses, go-cart track, baseball batting cages, water slides and arcades.

Huish has collected 18,000 signatures on a Save-the-Fun-Center petition.

“Overwhelming public support helped us win the first battle, but don’t let them think we’ve won the war,” Mason said, pointing out that a Nov. 18 meeting with the California Transportation Commission, a kind of intermediary in such disputes, may decide the matter.

Dale Schmoldt, a design engineer with Caltrans, said Huish and the highway authority “have come to a meeting of the minds in terms of freeway and ramp location. We’ve agreed to revise our original plan. The latest option gives him more property. Instead of an off-ramp cutting through the middle of the property, we may go around the north end.”

Mason said Huish still plans to meet with the California Transportation Commission because the case is by no means decided. Regardless of what route the ramp follows, the fun center stands to lose ground--literally and figuratively, the attorney said.

The original proposal has a ramp cutting through the heart of the park as a way of connecting California 125 with Fletcher Parkway and Amaya Drive. Caltrans officials had balked at erecting the ramp on concrete stilts, saying it would be too costly and landfill would have to be used.

“I just want them to go up over us,” Huish said before this victory. “But they want to bury us. And they don’t care.”

Huish contended that Caltrans’ original plan--both by its location and method of construction--would ruin the park and that attempts to relocate the park have been fruitless.

Mason said the latest compromise would have the ramp skirting the northern end of the property and possibly being erected on stilts--proposals to which no one has agreed officially.

Caltrans officials say the project is vital to the area because it uses California 125 as the north-south connection between California 52 and much-traveled Interstate 8. Interstate 8 is so burdened by commuter traffic, they argue, that something has to be done.