Worrisome Roadside Attractions

Hal Reesen was a tire-kicking, engine-checking, door-slammin’ prospective buyer on the lookout for a used Mercedes. Jimmy Gomez was a real wheeler-dealer, a sharp-dressed seller with a spit-polished pickup he wanted to unload.

Their tracks crossed last Sunday morning at North County’s latest impromptu car lot along El Camino Real, where used cars, trucks, vans, campers and just about anything on four wheels are lined up like books on end.

Throughout North County, such spontaneous sales sites spring up each weekend as roadside carnivals of suburban capitalism. On Saturdays and Sundays at the Encinitas location, hundreds of people gather to price and peruse scores of vehicles up for sale by their owners.

For buyers and sellers alike, it’s a way to skip the dealers, middlemen and Pennysaver ads and get down to business right there on the street or vacant lot. Often, sellers simply display their telephone numbers on their cars and leave, reporting back to the scene when a prospective buyer gives them a ring.

Encinitas, however, is considering putting the brakes to the goings-on at the latest auto row, claiming that the mixture of motorists and pedestrians along the busy commercial stretch is an accident waiting to happen.

Officials in several North County cities say the car lots are a reappearing problem despite efforts to stop them.

After receiving complaints from several residents and business people, including some local used car dealers, Encinitas officials discussed the impromptu lot at a Thursday meeting with business owners at City Hall.

Officials fear that drivers and pedestrians stopping to check out the cars--with some would-be buyers running across the four-lane road to reach the vehicles--will sooner or later cause a serious accident at the site. City Manager Warren Shafer said the city staff is researching the problem and may ask the City Council to post no-parking signs along the route to discourage the practice. Problem is, another lot will just pop up somewhere else, he said.

“It’s a real headache for us, no question about it,” he said. “It’s almost like some of these people are going into business for themselves, using city property to do it.

“We’ve had this problem before in other spots,” Shafer said. “But every time we put up no-parking signs to put a stop to it, it moves somewhere else. There’s a definite market out there for this type of thing. We’re just looking for some way we can regulate it.”

In recent months, the lots have popped up at a vacant lot at the La Costa Avenue exit along Interstate 5 in Carlsbad, the intersection of Bear Valley Parkway and San Pasqual Valley Road in Escondido, along Rancho Santa Fe Road in San Marcos and along Manchester Avenue near MiraCosta College’s San Elijo campus in Encinitas.

Last year, Solana Beach officials effectively closed down yet another impromptu car lot at Highland Avenue and Lomas Santa Fe Boulevard, across from the exclusive Lomas Santa Fe Country Club. For months before the city’s action, sellers lined the roadside lot with pedigreed cars--BMWs, Jaguars and Bentleys--as well-to-do buyers came calling from all over the county.

Solana Beach City Manager Michael Huse said the posting of no-parking signs on both sides of the street solved the problem. “There were all these looky-loos and traffic jams; we just said enough,” he said.

“Lucky for us, the lot didn’t just move on down the street like a lot of them do. This one was in such a high-visibility spot, the others all paled in comparison.”

But Huse said officials are keeping a wary eye out to make sure the lots don’t spring up anywhere else in the tiny seaside city.

“We’re vigilant--we keep a close eye out,” he said, “because this isn’t the kind of commerce we want on our public streets.”

San Diego County sheriff’s deputies say the cars--often left unattended for an entire weekend--have become an invitation to thieves.

“The crooks know the cars are on the street and their owners are at home some miles away,” Deputy Jim Van Middlesworth said. “It’s like an orchard out there--with the car thieves doing the picking.”

Dennis Cook, owner of Herman Cook Volkswagen in Encinitas, is one businessman who has complained about the El Camino Real site, which is about half a mile south of Olivenhain Road. Sure, he’d rather have the buyers come to his lot, he says. But it’s not John Q. Public he’s worried about.

“There are some licensed car dealers out there who are using the practice as an illegal way to get around the rules of selling cars,” he said. “There’s people out there with dealer licenses who aren’t supposed to be selling cars on the street. The problem is widespread.”

A state law passed last year is aimed at keeping tabs on dealers who illegally sell cars outside their proper place of business, and provides for fines of up to $2,500 per incident, say people in the auto sales industry.

“The law protects the consumer so they have some redress when they buy from a professional, so they know who and what they’re dealing with,” said Peter Welch, director of government and legal affairs for the Motor Car Dealers Assn. of Southern California.

“But there’s not a law that says a private citizen can’t slap a for-sale sign in his car and display it on public streets. The Department of Motor Vehicles has no qualms with them.”

Encinitas Mayor Gail Hano, however, said the problem has vexed city officials.

“These lots spring up like mushrooms after a spring rain,” she said. “We’re caught between the shady professional dealer who doesn’t have the proper license to sell cars on the street and the average citizen who does have a right to put a for-sale sign in his car and park it on the street somewhere.

“But there’s also a safety risk here. I’ve seen people bolt across the street at the El Camino Real site to scout out a car. The problem is you just can’t paint every curb in the city red.”

Robert Sirovy, executive vice president of the Encinitas Chamber of Commerce, said officials have considered several options, including opening up a weekend swap meet-type lot at an area high school.

He recently did a check of several Southern California cities to see how the problem is handled elsewhere.

“The best solution was in Beverly Hills, where there’s meters on every street,” he said. “But I don’t think that would work in Encinitas.”

Down at the El Camino Real lot, the buyers and sellers have their own ideas about the practice.

As he taped a for-sale sign on the window of his green Ford Ranger truck with the shiny mag wheels, Jimmy Gomez of Encinitas said he has seen the lot shut down at several locations in recent months--always moved along by jealous used-car dealers.

He concedes that there’s an occasional traffic jam caused by neck-craners who suddenly slam on their brakes in traffic to look at a car. But that’s suburbia, he says.

“There’s a need for this scene,” Gomez said. “People are just tired of paying dealer prices for their used cars. But there’s always some do-gooder around to tell people what to do--spoil a good thing.

“I say just leave it alone. Let this roadside market have a life.”