Preston Turegano

San Diego Business

Old Town Story

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park
By Preston Turegano
Posted on Mon, Oct 26th, 2009
Last updated Mon, Oct 26th, 2009

There are a lot of new things going on in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.

The popular tourist attraction at the north end of San Diego Avenue recreates the setting of California life between 1821 and 1872 when San Diego evolved from a Mexican village to an American frontier town. In keeping with that era, the park displays 22 historic buildings, and has 42 concession (mostly shops and restaurants) operators who pay the state a percentage of their revenues.

Currently nearing completion behind the park’s Seeley Stables Museum is a 45-foot-high working reproduction of a water-pumping windmill installed in San Diego in the 1870s. The $99,800-redwood windmill financed by a park deferred maintenance fund is based on a design by California prioneer William Isaac Tustin.

Like the stables, the windmill will allow visitors to interact with the function and purpose of the site.

Plaza entrance to Fiesta de Reyes shops

and restaurant.

A few yards from the windmill, the 180-year-old Casa de Bandini is undergoing a $5.5-million reconstruction and is expected to be open for business as a restaurant and a boutique hotel next spring.

The Casa de Bandini project has included seismic retrofitting of the building’s 42-inch thick adobe walls, as well as an all-new second floor that will operate as the 10-suite Cosmopolitan Hotel.

The hotel, and a new ground floor restaurant, will be operated by Old Town Family Hospitality Corp., which earlier this year took over the remaining eight years of a 10-year concession to run restaurants and shops at the northeast corner of the park. For more than 30 years, that section of the park (developed on what originally was a motel built in 1939) was known as Diane Powers’ Bazaar del Mundo -- a cultural complex that was a huge tourist draw.

In 2005, the concession for that area was taken over by Delaware North, which called the property Plaza del Pasado. It failed to attract sufficient numbers of visitors to make the operation profitable.

Delaware North turned over its concession to Old Town Family Hospitality and its president Chuck Ross, a restaurateur and former resident of Florida who moved to San Diego 30 years ago. He re-named the place Fiesta de Reyes. It includes the Casa de Reyes restaurant and 13 specialty shops. Like previous incarnations, the site is primarily an al fresco dining experience.

Casa de Bandini construction project

Over the years, the Spanish Colonial courtyard in the center of the property had become overgrown with vegetation. Ross had the area opened up and replaced older plantings with less imposing installations, including native species.

As part of the landscape redesign, the dining patio was enlarged to almost twice its original size, a new carizo arbor was built to replace the ineffective canvas shade covering, and fire pits and torches were installed. Ross also is doing repairs to the clay tile roof of the Casa’s Juan Street side, which has been an eyesore for several years.

Among some of the most intriguing shops at Fiesta de Reyes are Temecula Olive Oil Company; Beacon Artworks Galley featuring colorful originals of San Diego landmarks and attractions by noted artist and gallery founder RD Riccoboni; Urban Seed and Flowers Home & Garden, and La Panaderia, which bakes traditional Mexican pastries such as pan dulce and churros.

“Fiesta de Reyes presented some unique challenges for us,” Ross said. “We needed to bring back the bright, cheerful experience that had been somewhat lost, but we also had to respect some very severe restrictions in keeping with the state mandate to recreate things much as they might have been in 1850.”

Adjacent to Fiesta de Reyes plaza entrance is the Barra Barra saloon, also run by Old Town Family Hospitality.

The arrival of Old Town Family Hospitality was not without difficulties. Earlier this year, about 150 Fiesta de Reyes employees – most members of Unite HERE (Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees) Local 30 – were fired. The union represented employees at two restaurants. About two dozen of those let go returned to work as nonunion employees.

In a published report earlier this year, Ross acknowledged the firings were a “sensitive issue” but said it was a matter of dollars and cents. To keep the union in place would cost his company an additional $3 an hour per employee, he said.

Citing the park’s funding via tax-generated state revenue, the union continues to challenge how the State Parks Department awarded the concession to Old Town Family Hospitality.

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park

windmill as seen from Juan Street

Between July 1, 2008 and last June 30, the state spent almost $2 million in to operate the three-acre Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, which was created in 1968. Recent state budget cuts are expected to reduce that amount by at least 10 percent during the current fiscal year. Budget cuts also have triggered work furlough days for park state employees.

Prior to the current construction projects and transformation of the Casa de Fiesta corner of the park, two notable renovations have occurred, or are closing to completion, in the park area.

Cygnet Theatre, which early last year was awarded a concession to operate the Old Town Theatre inside the park, spent $650,000 on improvements on the 248-seat facility, including a new roof, new façade color, larger and ADA-compliant restrooms; and new state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems.

Operated by the Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO), the Whaley House Museum at 2476 San Diego Ave. has a new porch. The mansion – purported to be haunted -- is Southern California's oldest brick building and, at one time was San Diego County's seat of government.

Like many tourist attractions across the country, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park has felt the impact of the economic recession, especially when it comes to attendance.

During the first eight months of 2009, approximately 4.1 million people visited the park compared to 4.4 million during the same eight months last year. Since 1995, total annual attendance has seesawed at the park. The year 2000 was an attendance bonanza, with more than 8.8 million visitors. Of the past 14 years of Old Town State Historic Park attendance tracked by the state, 2004 saw the smallest annual attendance at just under 4.7 million.

With the fourth quarter of 2009 remaining, park officials are hoping visitor interest will pick up. That may happen because the park and its shops and eateries are considered by many individuals a safer alternative than Mexico. In the Tijuana-Rosarito Beach area, hundreds of slayings have occurred over the past few years as the nation’s illicit drug cartel continues to proliferate. Suspected informants, competing drug dealers, law enforcement personnel, and innocent bystanders have been victims of the cartel violence. Throughout Mexico, thousands of such slayings have occurred.

“I believe many Old Town San Diego State Historic Park visitors have found the park a safe place to enjoy not just Mexican culture, but also American frontier culture,” said Richard Dennison, (State Parks) District Public Safety Coordinator and Historic Sector Visitor Services Superintendent. “It’s great place for everyone, especially families.”

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park

• Adjacent to the Old Town Transit Center, with Coaster, Trolley, and MTS Bus service

• Phone: 619-220-5422
• Visitor Center & Museums

  10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily

  Admission free

• Retail Shops & Restaurants
• 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.; hours may vary

About the author: Preston Turegano is a former award-winning San Diego Union-Tribune writer who covered the inner workings of local, state and national arts institutions, including government support of the arts. When needed, he reviewed symphony, opera, theater and dance performances, and art exhibits. He also covered local TV and radio, network and cable TV programming, and wrote feature articles such as travel stories, personality profiles, and celebrity gossip tidbits. For the San Diego Tribune, he was a general assignment news reporter who had to know something about everything, but not everything about something. Before his Union-Tribune employment, Turegano was a U.S. Navy journalist. More recently, he was public relations manager for the San Diego-based Mainly Mozart for two years.
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