Putting a Lid on Big Box in San Juan

A few years ago, Wal-Mart wanted to open up on the north end of town. No thanks, said San Juan Capistrano.

This year, Home Depot asked to open up on the south end of town. It would have handed the city several million dollars and future sales-tax revenue. Last week, in a 69%-to-31% vote, San Juan Capistrano said no thanks.

I’d love to string out the story line that this little town of aging cowboys and their descendants is clinging to its heritage and fighting off the Big Box stores that practically define the rest of Orange County.

After all, this is the historic town with the historic mission that dates to 1776 and the historic swallows that are supposed to return every spring.

It’s the city with California’s oldest residential street (Los Rios). It’s a town where future heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey liked to stop on his way to gamble in Mexico before the inn he stayed at burned down in 1918.

It’s a town where, a stone’s throw from the main drag, the public can still talk to barnyard animals on a family farm and kids can ride a pony around a corral for a mere two bucks.

So, yes, there’s plenty of character left in the old town.

And if the story line from last week’s election is that a desire to hang on to that character was what killed off Home Depot, I’m not going to fight it.

But is it true? The town isn’t Irvine, but it isn’t Mayberry, either.

I spent an afternoon in town this week, talking to people about the Home Depot rejection. Some evoked the desire to ward off the Big Boxers; others said the vote was the result of nuts-and-bolts issues like traffic or a preferred alternate use for the property or the fear that smaller, home-grown merchants would be run out of business.

Even those practical reasons sort of work their way back to preserving something they fear is slipping away.

“There are a lot of things that have happened to San Juan Capistrano,” says a grandmother who first moved to town in the 1970s. “There’s the auto row on Camino Capistrano, those silly fast-food things on Del Obispo. These are the kind of things we don’t want our town to have. They’re commercial, and they’re cheapening our town. We want to keep it quaint.”

But it’s not like the town is in a time warp. It has upscale coffeehouses and restaurants that compete for customers with establishments that harken to the old days.

Jennifer Black, a waitress at a restaurant on Ortega Highway leading into town, says the Home Depot issue gave the regulars plenty to talk about. “People want to keep it this picturesque town,” she says, “but the way Orange County is growing, I don’t know how long that’ll be possible.”

Tony Axford runs a gift shop on Camino Capistrano. He lived for years in Dana Point and was upset when development systematically altered that town’s character. He thinks that prospect united the San Juan Capistrano interests that rejected Home Depot.

But Bill Kogerman, a Laguna Hills resident who ran the losing effort to persuade San Juan Capistrano voters last week to approve a housing-and-school project, says the traffic concerns define a local problem. “They’re conflicted,” Kogerman says while clearing out a temporary office on Camino Capistrano. “They want to be a tourist town and have people come here, but they want everybody to walk.”

Home Depot was shot down by the last vestiges of the city’s cowboy past.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

That’s also why I saved this myth-buster for last: Within walking distance of the Home Depot site stands a Costco. It’s been there since 1987.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons at (714) 966-7821 or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or at dana .parsons@latimes.com.