![]() “People would go to A&W before or after a movie at the Starlite Drive-in after the beach, or after a day at Pinto Lake, or after a day of shopping at Ford’s department store,” Vestal said. Watsonville native Kim Vestal said she remembers hearing teenagers talk about cruising between A&W and the Regal gas station on lower Main Street near the Pajaro bridge. ![]() Photo courtesy Pajaro Valley Historical Association The A&W restaurant is shown on Freedom Boulevard in the early 1960s. It fronts the shopping center which houses the vacant Kmart building, which is owned by a different entity. The building on the 18,500-square-foot property was remodeled into a drive-thru in the 1980s. Commissioner Jenni Veitch-Olson dissented, and Commissioner Ed Acosta was absent. and replace it with a drive-thru-only, 1,119-square-foot Starbucks. The Watsonville Planning Commission voted 5-1 on Monday to approve the plan to demolish the 1,488-square-foot building at 1726 Freedom Blvd. Work crews will soon raze it to build a new drive-thru-only Starbucks, adding to Watsonville’s pantheon of seven of that multinational corporation’s locations. The halcyon days of that ‘50s-style burger joint are long gone, and the building’s time as a popular taqueria is also drawing to a close. “So I walked out there and he ordered a milkshake.” “He was honking his horn for a long time, and I was wondering what was wrong,” said co-owner Fernando Muñoz. ![]() The man was remembering the days when the building was still the A&W drive-in, which served as a weekend cruising spot for teenagers to grab burgers and shakes. But that the Starbucks simply met the criteria for the conditional-use permit, he said.įoster’s does not plan to move to a new spot as Beiderwell said earlier they couldn’t find a suitable location.During the pandemic, a white-haired man pulled up to Taqueria Mi Tierra 2 on Freedom Boulevard and began to honk his horn, believing that a carhop would come out to take his order. He said he doesn’t blame the city, noting that it’s not the city’s job to pick and choose which business ends up on the spot. Which was, frankly, very nice of them to do. “I had several people call me and tell me they wrote letters and said, ‘We don’t want another Starbucks.’. Neighbors had plenty to say about the switch from the nearly 50-year-old Foster’s to a Starbucks, Beiderwell said. While landlords cut tenants lots of breaks on their rents when restaurants were suffering during the height of the pandemic, times are moving on.Īs leases expire, some landlords are raising rents to market value, an increase that not every business can afford. The commercial business market has experienced some turmoil in recent months as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. The landlord declined to comment to The Bee. “It’s David versus Goliath, and Goliath is going to win this one,” Beiderwell said. The restaurant has been at the site since 1976. The lease for Foster’s Freeze had expired months ago, and the restaurant was operating on a month-to-month lease. The City of Fresno has approved the conditional-use permit Starbucks filed to majorly remodel the existing restaurant into a Starbucks and add a drive-thru. “We’re thinking that it’s almost going to be a party,” said Don Beiderwell, with so many people planning to stop by and wish them well. One of the franchisees who owns this Foster’s Freeze and several others in town said Thursday that he’d received notice that the fast food restaurant must leave. Now it’s official: The Foster’s Freeze will close. The fate of the Foster’s Freeze restaurant near Palm and Bullard avenues in Fresno has been up in the air for months as Starbucks filed paperwork to open a coffee shop in the rented building.
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