Fast-Food Outlet’s Benches Stir McStrife in La Jolla

Wayne Butler couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing before him was a woman customer--arms crossed, the toe of her high-heeled shoe tapping impatiently--demanding a refund on her McDonald’s Happy Meal platter.

But it wasn’t the food or the fixings she was complaining about.

Moments earlier, the woman’s 8-year-old son had purchased the fast food fare--with its surprise toy inside--at the McSnack McDonald’s outlet on pricey Prospect Street in La Jolla. Then he had wandered over to a nearby delicatessen so his mother could buy a submarine sandwich.

But, as the boy sat on a wooden bench outside the Doghouse Deli, happily devouring his Happy Meal, he abruptly got an unceremonious boot from a shop owner. No McDonald’s food, the boy was told, was going to be consumed on a Doghouse Deli bench.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Butler, the McSnack manager. “The guy actually kicked the kid off the bench because he wasn’t eating his food. The mother was mad, and I couldn’t blame her. So I gave her the $4 back. I even let the kid keep the surprise gift.”

Last month, the McSnack franchise’s owner decided he’d seen enough people wandering around Prospect Street with no place to sit.

And so, one sunny morning, Ralph Grimmer and a next-door fast-food operator unveiled the eight new recycled-plastic benches they had installed along the palm-shaded sidewalk outside their restaurants.

Now, Grimmer announced proudly, there was room not only for his customers, but for elderly tourists, couples with children--even a solitary weekend stroller.

Reaction from fellow merchants, however, was served up faster than a burger and fries under the Golden Arches.

“The whole town is up in arms,” said Larry Klein, owner of the Doghouse Deli, whose outside wooden bench bears a hand-drawn sign with the international circle and slash symbol, warning non-customers to back off.

“There was never supposed to be fast food outlets in this town to begin with. But somehow they shoehorned in this little McSnack place. Now, they want to turn it into a full-blown fast-food restaurant.”

But McSnack operators say that, frankly, they’re growing tired of the complaints--many from other fast-food vendors jealous of the restaurant’s success. The benches, they say, are here to stay.

“It’s just so typical of this place,” said Butler. “People in La Jolla bitch about everything. And, when you try to solve the problem, they still bitch. . . . It’s no wonder nothing ever gets done around here.”

Before the benches were installed, nearby merchants called to complain about the McSnack wrappers littering their storefronts and McSnack customers lingering on the steps outside their shops, Butler said.

Now, he says, they complain that the slate-colored benches don’t meet their standards of what should be allowed to grace the La Jolla streetscape.

“I mean, one gallery owner complained that she can’t sell her $5,000 paintings with people slobbering into their Big Macs across the street. As if, once I stop selling my hamburgers, she’ll sell more of her paintings. That’s nerve, I’ll tell you.”

The controversy between hamburgers and high culture in La Jolla has polarized much of the downtown business community.

For many merchants, the benches are yet another symbol of the aesthetic decay of Prospect Street, a retail showcase they say has fallen on hard times.

The main street of La Jolla’s business district--where glitzy boutiques and exclusive restaurants have earned it the reputation of San Diego’s own Rodeo Drive--has become a sideshow of rug salesmen, T-shirt shops and tacky fast-food outlets, they say.

“We’ve been here 25 years, and this used to be a unique place where people came from around the world to find things they couldn’t find anywhere else,” said Doug Jones, owner of Jones Gallery.

“Now there’s so many chain galleries, rug merchants and fast-food places. I don’t like the idea of having a McDonald’s across the street in the first place. But those benches have just got to go. They’re attracting transients and a lot of other undesirables.”

For Joy Ortner, manager of the Hanson Art Gallery next door to the McSnack, the benches breed the likes of skateboarders and other window shoppers who look but never spend.

: “When the benches are full, people automatically get the impression that it’s okay to sit anywhere on the street eating hamburgers,” she said. “The whole sidewalk is littered with arms and legs and plastic containers and skateboards and young people, spilling over in front of our gallery.

“It’s just the greediness of the powers that be in this town to allow such a place to exist here--catering to people who think they can spend $3 on a hamburger and be provided a place to sit with a view like someone dining in a restaurant in a dignified way.”

Even some La Jolla shoppers believe that a bench warrant should be served on the McSnack benches and the people they attract.

“On most mornings, you see the trash all over the place and just want to take a hose off a fire truck and wash down the whole street,” said one woman while examining jewelry in a Prospect Street shop.

“It gives you the creeps. You just want to sanitize the place.”

Local officials have also had their eye on the McSnack benches. And many don’t like what they see.

“They’re in violation of city code,” said Jay Wharton, president of the La Jolla Community Planning Assn. “There are a variety of permits required for such benches, and the McSnack people only have one of them.”

The issue, he said, is how far the restaurant should be allowed to expand on its present use permit, which allows for only limited seating--and all of that inside the restaurant.

“They don’t even have the right kind of bench,” Wharton said. “There are several types of benches allowed throughout La Jolla, and theirs isn’t one of them. At first blush, I’d say that some sort of modification is in order.

“In the meantime, we’ve told them not to bother bolting the things down.”

Dan Drobnis, chairman of the La Jolla Town Council’s land use committee, acknowledged that more sidewalk benches are needed in downtown La Jolla. “There just aren’t enough of them,” he said.

“But this McSnack situation needs to be investigated carefully to see if McDonalds is doing the community a civic favor or trying to quietly convert themselves into a full-fledged restaurant with outside seating.”

Grimmer can only shake his head at the controversy.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, bending to pick up a white McSnack napkin tumbling by on the sidewalk. “I thought I was fulfilling a need, and all they say is that I’m bringing in a lower type of clientele.

“Well, let me tell you, no one drives to La Jolla to eat one of my Big Macs. My customers are already here. It’s just that not everyone can afford a $15 lunch in some high-priced restaurant.”

Butler put it more bluntly.

The recycled benches, he said, are the “environmentally right” thing to do. But does anyone recognize that?

“I’m getting stabbed in the back, and I’m getting sick of it,” he said. “I mean, I’ve got six or seven blade holes down my spine. I need some armor around this place.

“But you know what they always say--the tallest nail gets hit the hardest. Well, we’re getting nailed all right. Big time.”

Grimmer says his benches are just another way he has tried to become a good neighbor to fellow La Jolla merchants. After all, he’s made several improvements since buying the Prospect Street franchise in 1987.

The parent company had opened the outlet in 1984 and sold it three years later when sales began to lag. What he inherited, Grimmer says, was a major headache from the trash complaints of nearby merchants.

So he immediately took a walking tour of the area to see where some of his 1,000 customers a day were leaving their trash and bought several city-approved trash containers for those sites.

Each day, Grimmer says, he still sends out employees to empty those containers and keep the area free of McSnack trash.

But the lack of seating near his restaurant was one problem he couldn’t solve.

Over the years, he says, sidewalk space has been at such a premium that merchants have begun posting “no Loitering” signs on street-level stairways as a warning to passers-by who might linger there to admire an ocean view, feed the birds--or submit to a Big Mac Attack.

“One business even put a metal gate in front of its steps so people couldn’t sit on them,” Grimmer said. “I mean, that really embarrassed me. So I just decided to do something about it. And what have I gotten in return? More headaches is what.”

The benches do have their supporters around downtown La Jolla.

“Nice places to sit are so rare in this area,” said one merchant, who asked not to be named. “I think it’s great that McDonald’s has given people a place so they don’t have to eat while walking. They’re not the most beautiful things on earth, but they do serve a purpose.”

Angelo Marcos, who owns an art gallery across the street from the McSnack, said the time to debate the existence of the fast-food outlet on Prospect has long passed.

“It’s like locking the barn door after the horses have all run away,” he said. “Why must so many people stick their heads in the sand like ostriches? My advice to them is to leave the benches alone and worry about your own businesses.”

On a bright weekday morning, an elderly couple from Carlsbad summed up the controversy as they sat on a bench outside the McSnack, watching the Prospect Street world go by.

“These benches are great, a way for outsiders to enjoy this place. So what’s the problem?,” said the man, holding his wife’s hand. “This is a snooty place down here anyway.

“Something like this wouldn’t happen up in Carlsbad.”