Fast Food Threatens Life in the Slow Lane in Julian : Development: Residents bitter over waiver to builder for his sale of desperately needed water to town.
In a matter of weeks, this historic gold-mining town will usher in something few of its 1,300 residents seem to want:
Fast food.
And it will come, it appears, in exchange for something the town desperately needs:
Water.
Before long, two new franchises, Dairy Queen and Subway Sandwiches, will open in Julian, an apple-growing center nestled in the Cuyamaca Mountains about 65 miles northeast of San Diego.
For most Julian residents, fast food is anathema in this town, known for its turn-of-the-century architecture, homemade apple pies and hand-pressed cider.
But the opening of the new outlets is a sign to many here that the expansion of burgeoning San Diego County has finally reached them. In their eyes, it is a first step toward transforming their deliberately picturesque main street into a convenience store strip, despite a drought-induced moratorium on new development.
The irony is that the drought also is responsible for bringing in the fast food.
Enter Jerry Zweig, the absentee owner of the building housing the franchises--and of the largest well in a town starved for water. Zweig offered a deal to the local water board: He would sell it 30,000 gallons of water a day if he got the waivers to build his restaurants. And he got them.
Now, almost everyone is angry, bitter and vowing that no other fast-food outlets will ever open in Julian.
“Unless we stop it,” says Julian News Editor Michael Judson-Carr, “we’ll become another Poway Road or another Ramona, and Julian will no longer be Julian. So what do we have now? A big-city scandal and crisis, in a small town.”
Julian has been hard hit by California’s drought. The town gets all of its drinking water from wells, which are overseen by the Julian Community Services District, otherwise known as the five-member water board.
Judson-Carr and others charge that Zweig, a San Diego developer, is holding the water board hostage. The developer now has the first and only business to be granted water rights since the moratorium took effect last year.
Harry Seifert, manager of the water district, said that, in return for the permits, Zweig agreed to provide the town 30,000 gallons of water a day at $1.50 per 1,000 gallons, over a 10-year period.
“That’s all he’ll allow us,” Seifert said. “His well actually could pump more. It’s one of the biggest around.”
Seifert, a 37-year resident of Julian, said the town had no choice but to give Zweig what he wanted, although he refuses to discuss allegations that Zweig also delivered an ultimatum: No Dairy Queen, no water.
“Talk of a threat (by Zweig) is immaterial,” said Seifert, who also never wanted to see mass-produced food compete with Julian apple pie. “We had to give him an exception to the moratorium. The truth is, we are totally dependent on Zweig’s well. He provides anywhere from 30% to 50% of our daily usage (of water).”
Despite numerous calls to Zweig’s office, he could not be reached for comment.
Seifert said the board first began buying water from Zweig a year ago, at $3 per 1,000 gallons. Seifert said the town has suffered a gradual depletion of its water supply both because of the drought and a 22,000-gallon spill of gasoline from a now-defunct Chevron station that contaminated three of the eight wells owned by the district.
“Three wells have totally dried up,” Seifert said. “Our production is only 40% of what it was three years ago. How do I feel about being dependent on him? Very uncomfortable.”
The growing fear, among Judson-Carr and others, is that, when the lease expires on the Rongbranch Restaurant, Zweig--who also owns that property--might bring in a McDonald’s.
A straw poll by the town newspaper showed 72% of residents opposed fast food franchises of any kind.
“We’re different from Lake Arrowhead or Big Bear,” Judson-Carr said. “We’re not a stop en route to someplace else. We are the destination. People come here to look at the town. If you mess with the town, will people still come here? Probably not. Why would they?”
The only circumstance to have kept fast food and other unwanted urban entities out of Julian in the past, Judson-Carr said, was an unspoken agreement that such intrusions just wouldn’t intrude.
Judson-Carr said the town has an historic designation that requires architecture to conform to the turn of the century (1869 to 1913), but because it’s an unincorporated area of San Diego County, Julian has no mayor, no planning director and no real authority over growth and development.
“The fear now,” he said, “is that the drugstore will be a Long’s, the liquor store will be a Liquor Barn, the hardware store a Tru Value. The only reason it hasn’t happened was that unspoken bond, which Zweig has broken.
“That’s the emotional issue. The real issue we have to confront to keep Julian Julian is who’s in charge here? And what kind of planning are we entitled to have?”
Virginia Nunez, who, with her husband, moved to Julian from Santa Monica eight years ago, said the town is changing in a number of unpleasant ways.
“Tourists, and there are many, have started to lose their respect for Julian,” Nunez said. “It used to be this quaint little village where people from San Diego and L.A. would come for apple pie and to look at the snow in the winter. Unlike those places, we have four seasons.
“But now, they swoosh down our private driveways on their sleds and toboggans and scatter their trash everywhere. The drought has been ghastly, and now you have this one person dictating to the water board.”
Nunez sighed and said, “I never thought I’d want to leave here, but I’m getting to that point. Can you imagine it? Julian--no different from Santa Monica. I, for one, never thought it would happen.”
