Caltrans Bulldozers Set to Bury the Fun at Amusement Park

John Huish says the lesson is that you can’t fight City Hall and win, not even in La Mesa. Maybe especially in La Mesa.

And if you throw in Caltrans, otherwise known as the California Department of Transportation, “Well,” Huish says with a sigh, “there’s no way in the world you’ll win.”

Huish is the owner of the Family Fun Center of La Mesa, which, after 29 years at the same location, is being forced to close Sept. 16.

Huish says Caltrans wants to build a freeway off-ramp through the heart of the complex, and no amount of negotiating was able to save the 6 1/2-acre park, or get it re-opened any time soon.

“Caltrans told me that at 12:01 a.m. on the 17th, they plan to come in here and start bulldozing the place,” Huish said.

Sitting in his office Tuesday morning, the burly Huish was barely able to fight back tears. He and his late brother opened the park on June 3, 1961, and by Tuesday, the family had kept it open 10,697 consecutive days.

But now, Huish said with a hollow laugh, its days really are numbered.

He said the La Mesa location, at 8900 Fletcher Parkway, now averages more than half a million visitors a year, mostly children who live in the area.

Tuesday afternoon, those children considered news of the park’s demise to be just about the worst they’d ever heard.

“It’s horrible, an awful bummer,” said Bret Belyea, 13. “The place is so cool. I’ve played here for years.”

“I think it’s wrong,” said 13-year-old Holly Poland. “If it’s something good for kids, somebody figures a way to screw it up.”

“I consider it a tremendous loss,” said Thelma Poland, Holly’s grandmother. “It’s a good, clean, safe place for kids. I feel good about letting the kids come here, and there aren’t many places like that any more.”

Most of the kids come early, to play miniature golf on four courses, ride go-carts on two separate tracks or slide down the county’s only three-flume water slide.

Huish owns other, similar parks, one in Kearny Mesa, one in Escondido, and in Fountain Valley, Anaheim and Upland. He has new ones planned or under construction in Vista, Temecula, and San Juan Capistrano.

He says he’s upset about losing La Mesa because, “after all, it was our first,” and because the battle with Caltrans and later the city became like that of a small country defending its turf against a big invader.

Huish says he was first notified in 1964 that Caltrans wanted to build an off-ramp through the middle of the park. Caltrans officials say the overall project, connecting California 125 as the north-south link between Interstate 8 and California 52, is vital and necessary.

Huish concedes that, to improve transportation, the project is needed. He, like Caltrans, agrees that it will go a long way in easing the burden felt by commuters who every weekday clog I-8 during the trek to San Diego.

But Huish’s dream was and is to re-open the park after Caltrans is finished--at the earliest, he says, “three to five years from today. Just to be safe, call it four.”

He hopes to build on 2 1/2 acres of existing parkland and on 2 adjacent acres he acquired in a battle with the city of La Mesa, which wanted it for retail-commercial purposes.

Huish says he was surprised by La Mesa’s resistance, believing that had he received its support, he might have been able to re-open sooner or even to get Caltrans to put its ramp on stilts, thus preserving “the integrity of the park.”

“At least the children of La Mesa supported me,” he said.

Huish collected 75,000 signatures on a petition from patrons who wanted the park re-opened.

The battle over the adjacent land ended up in Sacramento, in a hearing before the California Transportation Commission last October. Pitted against Caltrans and the city of La Mesa, Huish won--in a 6-0 vote.

Panel members pointed out a law that had apparently escaped Huish’s foes: When a property owner’s land is displaced by Caltrans, any adjacent property must first be offered to the displaced party, in this case Huish. He instructed his attorneys to buy the two-acre parcel immediately at a cost of about $1 million.

Huish, who has made a fortune with the fun-center concept after starting with a $1,500 miniature golf course in Provo, Utah, where he went to college, said he has now spent more than $150,000 in attorneys’ fees.

“As far as it’s being a community asset, we’re sorry to see the fun center close,” said David Wear, the city manager of La Mesa. “But because of this freeway project, we’re losing a fire station. We had hoped to build one on the two acres Huish now owns. But, Mr. Huish owns the land, and he can do what he wants to. He will, however, have to acquire some changes in zoning.”

“They kind of snuck those (the zoning changes) in on me,” Huish said. “I hope it isn’t a problem.”

Huish said he offered a corner of the two-acre tract to the city as space for a new fire station, “but they wanted the whole thing!” he said with a roar. “Can you believe it? It was nothing but greed.”

In the meantime, he’ll keep an eye on La Mesa, hoping to re-open with a vastly different, and smaller, park about four years from now.

“But it will never be the same,” he said. “This was our first one, our baby. We really hate to lose it. But they didn’t want us here, no matter how many kids came to play. And eventually, they got their way.”