Battle Lines Are Drawn Over Carlsbad Knight Spot : Growth: A planned Medieval Times restaurant has split the city into those who call it tacky and those who welcome tourism.
Many longtime Carlsbad residents who are already aghast over their community’s transformation from a cozy seaside village into a sprawling suburb are worried that the city is about to hit bottom, all in the name of tourism.
They’ve watched subdivisions, motels and burger joints spring up, and now they think a proposed theme restaurant that would feature rousing dinner shows of medieval hand-to-hand combat and jousting by costumed knights on charging steeds is going too far.
“It’s an aggressive type of entertainment, I don’t see how it’s much different than a bullfight,” lamented Cindy Ward, a city parks and recreation commissioner who lives in Spinnaker Hill. “It’s not a dinner theater where you kick back and relax, it’s a place where you get rowdy.”
Foes regard the Medieval Times restaurant, which expects 1,100 patrons per show, not only as a tacky roadside attraction, but a blasphemy against the city’s cherished image. “There’s been a real push and concern to maintain the village-like atmosphere,” Ward said. “Medieval Times just doesn’t fit that.”
Fifteen years ago, a proposed Captain Nemo’s floating restaurant and amusement park was booed out of town.
The latest issue once again symbolizes the community’s chronic division over growth.
While neighborhood associations are circulating petitions against the restaurant proposed for Interstate 5 and Palomar Airport Road, business people welcome Medieval Times as an opportunity to help put Carlsbad on the map.
“Tourism and tourism development are one of our major concerns,” said Lee Bohlmann, executive vice president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. “When they (visitors) come to Carlsbad, once they watch the sunset on the beach, there’s nothing to do, there’s no night life.”
So strongly do downtown merchants feel about stimulating the local economy that more than 400 of them signed their own petition favoring Medieval Times, which received tentative approval but awaits final action by the city’s planning commission.
This game of ping-pong petitions isn’t the kind of reception Ron Yeakley, Medieval Times’ director of national advertising, expected when his firm came to Carlsbad, offering what he believes is a class act.
Two other Medieval Times restaurants exist, the first opening near Disney World in Orlando, Fla., five years ago, followed by another in California’s Buena Park in 1986. The theme of medieval Spain was transplanted in America by the Medieval Times’ Spanish owners.
“It’s hard to find anybody who leaves the show and doesn’t rave about it,” Yeakley said.
For Carlsbad, the firm envisions a 65,000-square-foot “castle like” structure with a sandy arena surrounded by 1,100 seats in six rooting sections. The menu would include whole roast chicken or spareribs. Beer and wine would be available. “You eat with your hands. There was no silverware in 1093 Spain,” Yeakley said.
Eighteen horses and six knights perform in each nearly two-hour show. The animals are stabled on site.
The entertainment includes equestrian drills and medieval games such as spearing rings with lances. That dark period of history wouldn’t be complete without personal combat, even simulated, so the pageant offers knights flailing away with swords and clubs. The combat is safely orchestrated, Yeakley said.
Knights on horseback charge each other with balsa lances, which easily break on contact as the stricken rider rolls off the horse. “They’re trained, and the entire show is choreographed,” Yeakley said. “Each section of crowd is lustily cheering on its own knight,” he added. “It’s quite a to-do.”
Too much of a to-do, say some neighborhood associations.
“This isn’t the kind of thing you identify with Carlsbad,” said Bailey Noble, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and president of the 120-member Terramar Assn. “Carlsbad would like to think of itself as 12,000 or 15,000 people, which it was when I moved here back in ’71.”
Now the city’s population is 62,000, and Noble argues that Medieval Times would belie the city’s campaign to portray itself as a village.
The association’s petition reads, in part, that “Medieval Times restaurant would provide minimal and temporary entertainment value to the citizens of Carlsbad. . . .” Noble said that “within a month, everybody in Carlsbad could see the damn thing if they want to”--probably never to return.
But Yeakley counters that “we get a tremendous amount of repeat business” as patrons return with friends and relatives. Show tickets cost $26 to $30 for adults and $15 to $18 for kids.
Yeakley rails at the notion the enterprise would sully Carlsbad’s village identity, as the restaurant would be in a commercial-industrial area 2 miles south of the city’s quaint downtown. “There’s no village atmosphere in the area we are. I guess people are going to have one reason or another to oppose a project,” he said.
Still, Noble said, 14 neighborhood groups are passing petitions to defeat the project. It’s not known yet how many signatures are being gathered, but Sharon Pierce, treasurer of the Terramar Assn., said sentiment is running high against the restaurant. Pierce said she talks to 30 to 50 people a week, “and only two have said they don’t care whether it goes there or not.”
Although neighborhood opposition may be significant, it isn’t universal.
Jesse Anderson, president of Altamira Unit 4 Homeowners’ Assn. said, “I’m basically neutral. I believe in free enterprise. You can’t push everybody out. If it does well, it will probably help the city with sales tax.”
Although the debate may swirl around Medieval Times’ aesthetic and entertainment value, it is traffic that may play the critical role in whether the restaurant ever opens.
The planning commission voted 4 to 3 last month for the proposed land use, but wants city planners and the developer to work out a way to offset the effect of the 740 vehicles expected per show.
The primary access is Palomar Airport Road, which would carry traffic over I-5 toward the restaurant. It is now a two-lane bridge that Caltrans plans to widen in 1991 at the earliest. “Staff had some concerns about the project going in before the widening,” said Bob Johnson, the city’s traffic engineer.
Whether Medieval Times would be required to await the road widening is “one of the big imponderables,” Yeakley said. “We don’t know whether this is going to happen or not.”
