Napa No More?

Published in shorter form August 31, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I have a short-handled hammer sitting on my desk, with the receipt from Lindsay’s Napa Auto Parts underneath it.  It’s holding down more than the receipt:  it’s holding the memory of all the community life I have experienced in that place of business which, unfortunately, is about to disappear.  

     I bought it last week when I went to ask Jose Godoy if the rumor the store is closing was really true.  Jose has been ordering auto parts for me for 12 years, and I could tell from his face, even before he finished helping the customers in front of me, that it was.

     “So what can I help you with, Trudy?” he asked for the hundredth and maybe last time.  I had come wishing I could help him, though I felt helpless enough to cry.  For all the times they have befriended me, he and Joe Lopez (aka “Little Joe”), and their former boss, Bob Kisling, I am clearly in their debt.  “August 31^st is our last day,” he said.

     That part of town has become pretty lifeless in a retail sense, ever since the thrift store, Keys Upholstery and the body shop moved that once inhabited the brick buildings across the street.  Then the discount goods store to the south folded up its tent, and the Stamper Motors building burned, leaving a garish scene of charred devastation for months and months.  It’s not hard to see how business on that block could take a hit.  I sadly paid for my hammer, which will remind me of them every time I see it, and went home.

           

     The next night I found myself at the Lindsay City Council meeting doing battle with the plan to develop a Dollar General store on the southeast corner of the roundabout.  When they first proposed building it on Hermosa, it was a block east, on the southwest corner of Hermosa and Mirage.  They intended to demolish the former Central California Citrus Exchange Building, and they’d hired a residential building appraiser to write a report saying the building was in such horrible condition it couldn’t be saved, hoping to ward off any protest over the loss of this historic architectural resource.  By the grace of God we were able to make the folly of that plan clear, and eventually the building was purchased and restored in four short months.  Let us just say that the City staff was engaged in serious misrepresentation of the building’s true condition in the effort to get Dollar General located on that street.

           

     The plan then shifted then to the west side of that block, proposing to demolish the former Flying A station that had been Ed’s Auto for 3 decades until he sold the business to Miguel Chavez, who operated it as M & J’s Auto Repair.  We opposed that plan in defense of Miguel’s business and also for the inadequate planning assessment, including the obvious traffic problems of cars backed up into the already hard-to-navigate roundabout and 70-foot delivery trucks blocking traffic on Hermosa.  Just as we prepared to go to court on the matter, Dollar General pulled out.  But last week, just two+ years later, after driving Miguel to move, then dismantling the historic Flying A station and demolishing the old Pepper’s Market building, they brought the same plan back.

           

     Everyone I tell about this plan says “That’s not the right place for it.” Instinctively people know what it will do to traffic, but I think they also are responding to the decentering of downtown.  This plan is an effort to make Hermosa the new main street, which has the distinct potential to cause the former downtown brick buildings to be abandoned by businesses trying to survive, hoping to catch the new wave before they drown.  It’s a perfect example of 1960’s strip mall development that emptied downtowns across the country, a planning mistake we’ve been trying to overcome for at least 3, if not 5 decades.

           

     Tuesday night at the council meeting I proposed modifications to the new/old site plan that would make the parking lot entrance a little further from the roundabout, and other changes that could make the roundabout intersection more public-friendly.  But I also reminded them of another site that supposedly was considered when Dollar General first proposed building in our town.

           

     It’s that now-empty parcel of land across from Napa’s building, the old Stamper Motors site.   The fire that demolished that building occurred Thanksgiving weekend 2014, about 6 months after Dollar General pulled out of Lindsay, avoiding our lawsuit.  Although it took many months for the site to be cleared of rubble, it has been waiting patiently for redevelopment.  And after Tuesday’s council meeting, in the middle of a good night’s sleep, I realized that’s where the placement of a Dollar General store would do the most good for reviving the downtown.

           

     I took this fresh-born idea to Jose a day later and asked “Do you think having that store across the street would help your business here?”  You should have seen his face.  Hope filled the room.  It not only would bring new customers to an old part of town that could use them, it would also eliminate the roundabout traffic jams and delivery truck issues we identified Tuesday night because the site is near the oldest, easiest truck route in town.

           

     So add your prayer to God’s good grace if you feel the same.  It will take something like an act of Congress to get this project to relocate – but that’s what I thought when we were trying to keep them from demolishing the Citrus Exchange Building.  That gleaming little building reminds me to not lose hope.  Maybe we can keep Napa Auto Parts after all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher and rural advocate who writes.  Thanks to new councilman Brian Watson for his interest in building standards and revamping truck routes in town.  Send your community redesign ideas to P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Square Minus-One

Published August 17, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     It was a busy week in Lake Woebehere, my adopted home town.  The Lindsay City Council filled the vacancy made by Steven Mecum’s resignation with Brian Watson, assuring Councilmembers Kimball and Salinas that whatever they and the city staff want, they will have.  

     The Council also ratified the mistake they made when they appointed Bill Zigler to fill the city manager vacancy when Rich Wilkinson flew the coop with severance pay Pam Kimball arranged back when they used him to fill the vacancy Scot Townsend made when he flew the coop.  Bill Zigler, who once filled the position of Lindsay’s city planner, having no training or experience in planning, is now our permanent city manager with no training or experience except that which he’s received as interim, not to mention lacking the personal integrity required to make government transparency possible.

     So I guess you could say we’re back to square one, although I don’t know what date I’d put on that square.  The dreamy, smoke-and- mirror days of Scot Townsend’s regime are gone, with the hope of Lindsay’s revival stuck in the mud of reality his plans left us.  Much of the scheme remains, however, and will need to be watched if we’re not to be plunged further backward. 

     The next four months before the election will be interesting, if for no other reason than to watch Brian Watson recuse himself.  Mr. Watson lives in the house Jim Hunter bought from Signa Ellerding, the once-beautiful property on Parkside just north of the park and community center that Hunter subdivided to build three new houses which miraculously became homes to some of the city’s new employees the Townsend administration flew in from Utah to man the new McDermont facility.  Jim Hunter also obtained the land across from that house and had planned to build a large,upscale subdivision to fill the space between the redeveloped park, the Wellness Center and the new elementary school.  That subdivision, had it been completed by Mr. Hunter, at least would have provided the curbs and sidewalks to the elementary school the city eventually had to provide at taxpayer expense after 3 years of kids walking in mud.  

     Before he was appointed to Mecum’s seat, Brian Watson suggested to the Council that he had a solution to a problem of which the Council might not be aware:  the fact that few teachers in the Lindsay Unified School District actually live in our town.   Actually, they’d heard it before.  When Jim Hunter lived in town, it was proposed that the reason for this non-resident teaching cadre was the lack of decent housing for them to purchase, and that providing more decent housing would return us to our former glory days when most teachers lived in town.  I don’t know if anyone has asked the teachers why they prefer to live elsewhere; in my view, the Q:A was entirely self-serving.  But that was the plan.

     Mr. Hunter was also involved in building the townhouses just south of the new Wellness Center on former hospital district land which had to be converted to Section 8 housing which the city had to turn over to the county because Lindsay was incapable of operating it within the law.  In fact, they barely finished building it.  I mention this simply because it’s hard to remember everything that went on during that whirlwind time.

      In the meantime, nothing has been done to preserve the historic quality or economic viability of Lindsay’s downtown and much has been done to erode it.  The plan to put a Dollar General store on the southeast corner of the roundabout has returned, same developer, same beneficiaries, same lack of traffic or economic analysis to determine whether this site or business is appropriate.  That might sound like a boon to you, but that location is unlikely to stimulate customers to venture two blocks south to the main street where a handful of businesses have been gallantly trying to keep us anchored to that stretch.   

     And in the meantime, what once was Kisling’s Auto Parts and is now Napa, the last locally-owned auto parts store downtown, is going out of business.  When I went to commiserate, the young man at the counter said “It’s sad, really sad.  But Lindsay is just drying up.”  Four years ago, had the City considered my request to change the location of the proposed Dollar General store to a more central location, such as the Stamper Motors site that is now infinitely available having had the ancient brick building demolished by a Thanksgiving weekend fire in 2014, perhaps the increased business traffic could have saved Napa.  But that’s water under the bridge.  By the way, have you heard that Hanford plans to build a McDermont-like facility?  That should be fun, competing for events with a city that size.

     So that’s the news from Lake Woebehere, where the residents need to get stronger and more vigilant in monitoring city hall if we want any of our authentic community to remain.  Meet me in the council chambers at 6 p.m. on the 2^nd and 4^th Tuesdays of the month.  Maybe we can work our way back up to Square One if we try.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  Deep thanks to Colleen Childers all these years for her support and her love of Pepper’s Market, now MIA.  Send your thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

           

Uncovered

Published Dec. 17, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


Dear Friends and Neighbors,


     Since Thanksgiving I’ve had difficulty writing, not only this column but anything else.   At first I thought it was just my transition from worker to self-employed.  But as the days passed, I realized my muteness was caused by a sense of being uncovered.


     To be “covered” can mean a lot of things.  We use the word to describe everything from having insurance or a financial backer to having a roof over our heads or a tarp on the car.  Protection from the elements, whether natural or man-made, is the usual implication.  To be uncovered, then, is the removal of some layer of protection we consider normal, expected.


     The fire in Lindsay two days after Thanksgiving which destroyed the century-old brick building that once housed Stamper Motors left me feeling that we, as a community, have become uncovered.  The transition to our current state, in which the city’s fire protection is supplied by the police department, began many years ago when the police and fire departments were merged into one department of public safety under the leadership of Rich Wilkinson and Scot Townsend.  Despite protests by fire protection professionals and a grand jury investigation, that merger led eventually to the cross-training of policemen for fire work and the loss of professional firemen.


     Although there have been other examples of problems created by this double-duty arrangement, November’s fire was the handwriting on the wall.  According to one eyewitness, only two officers were on duty when the fire was called in.  It takes two people to man a fire truck, so both were employed fighting the fire and no one was available to direct the traffic that naturally began accumulating at the scene.  By the time two more officers responded to man the ladder truck (almost an hour after the fire started,) the streets were clogged with cars.  It took twenty minutes for the ladder truck to reach the fire two blocks from the station.  By that time the flames had stopped licking the skies behind Webb-Sanders Funeral Home, but the fire burned for hours, filling the streets downtown and lungs of every resident within a quarter mile with black smoke that lingered for days.


     I can hear their protests now:  this is the best we can do in a small town with an impoverished population, shrinking tax base, increasing absentee ownership, whatever other definitions of handicap that have become normal to many rural communities across the nation.  When people hear the name “Lindsay,” they no longer think of it as the center of Tulare County’s orange production or remember it as “a nice town, a great olive.”   They think of it as a farmworker town where people are regularly made hungry and thirsty by freezes and droughts.  We’re a town that regularly needs some kind of bailout by the government at one level or another, and the City’s become expert at raising the cry.


     But this dearth in fire coverage is the City’s own making.  I don’t think it’s the best we can do.  There’s some uncovering needed down at City Hall, and I hope the newly-elected City Council will address this question in the New Year.  In the meantime, everyone be really careful with those Christmas tree lights and New Year’s Eve fireworks lest we discover the hard way just how uncovered we really are.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a volunteer fireman’s daughter who remembers the death of her friend Kevin Suttles in the Brown's Point Cliff House fire in the second grade.  You can send her your suggestions for improvements in Lindsay’s fire protection c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.