A California city longs for its small-town past.

Story by Carlos Castillo / May 3, 2002

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The Cross Roads in 1952, the year it opened (Len Klempnauer)

Mel's Drive-In played the hopping backdrop in American Graffiti, the 1973 George Lucas movie set in small-city California that glorifies the drive-in restaurant, a postwar icon.

Santa Cruz, Calif., had its own versions of Mel's. The remnants of one such eatery, the Cross Roads Bar-B-Q Drive-In, have sparked a debate that addresses the fine line between whether a building is historically significant or just old.

The city of Santa Cruz, which owns the property, plans to eventually raze the former restaurant to make way for a park and natural-history museum. Opposing that plan is a group of people who want the city to preserve the building, which they say is an artifact from a unique time period.

 

Cross Roads in 1954 (LK)

The building's drive-in history was unearthed by Suzy Aratin of the city's planning department during a routine study of the property. Aratin says she was asked to prepare a cursory report on the building, then a liquor store.

"It was not the most beautiful thing, but it had an interesting design," Aratin says. "It reminded me of a drive-in diner I had gone to in Wisconsin."

Aratin, 29, asked her parents, who had lived in the area since the early 1960s, about the building. Her query reached the ears of Len Klempnauer, who had spent many hours toiling in the Cross Roads, his parents' restaurant.

 

The Klempnauers in 1953 (LK)

Klempnauer's parents opened the Cross Roads Bar-B-Q restaurant in 1947, a year after moving from Kansas City, Mo. Four years after that, they moved the business into the building that the city would purchase almost 50 years later.

During a recent visit to the building, Klempnauer, 65, looked past the weeds, peeling paint, broken glass, and the "Humboldt Hemp" sticker on one of the windows. Instead, he remembered his days working at the drive-in as a dishwasher and chief potato peeler.

"I cleaned more toilets than you can imagine," Klempnauer said.

 

Original menu (LK)

In its heyday, waitresses and carhops buzzed throughout Cross Roads, which stayed open 24 hours on Saturdays. One former customer, Nick Pagnini, 65, recalled that the Cross Roads—named for the five roads that intersect nearby—was "a local hangout." It functioned as a turnaround for cars cruising Pacific Avenue, the town's main drag. The other turnaround was Spivey's Five Spot, another Santa Cruz drive-in that has since disappeared.

Klempnauer graduated from high school in 1954, and in 1960 his parents sold the Cross Roads, even though, he asserts, the business was still profitable up to the end. The site became Danny's Drive-In, but that closed in 1966. A few years later, the building started its long run as a liquor store.

 

1954 photo (LK)

Klempnauer wants the city to possibly use the building to house the natural-history museum. "It's symbolic of an era in history that will never be repeated," he says, referring to the 1950s car culture that popularized the drive-in restaurant.

When Aratin discovered that the building was built in 1951, making it more than 50 years old, she realized it had to be evaluated for historical significance under the California Environmental Quality Act. Aratin turned her findings over to Susan Lehmann, a historical resources consultant hired by the city, for the evaluation.

However, Lehmann's study concluded that the building didn't merit protection under state law. One of the four criteria she considered was architectural significance, and few of building's characteristics have survived over the years. "It was my contention that to really consider it historic, it should really have more integrity," Lehmann says. "The thing that made it the drive-in that it was was the sign on it."

Unfortunately, the Cross Roads sign is long gone. John Filice, who owned the building when it was a liquor store, told Klempnauer he had taken the sign to the dump.

"The integrity is there," said Aratin, who cites several characteristics that define 1950s drive-in architecture: windows that slant inward, the "Flintstones" stonework, and the building's octagonal shape. Still, Aratin acknowledges that the process of judging historical significance is fraught with subjectivity.

But architecture is just one part of the historical litmus test. "If there's a constituency saying something is worth saving," Aratin says, "that should be taken into consideration."

 

Left to right: Len Klempnauer and former carhops Roxy Newland, Jackie McDow, Nancy Jellison, and Daisy Gandolfi (Dan Coyro)

In the case of the Cross Roads, the constituency is those people who frequented the drive-in, many of whom attended Santa Cruz High School in the 1950s. Klempnauer is leading the charge, imploring his classmates to send letters and e-mails to the city and the daily newspaper.

Lehmann's report to the city recommended that if the Cross Roads constituency shows ample support for preserving the structure, the city "should consider further research and documentation to determine if the structure should be added to its Historic Building Inventory," she wrote.

"I went a little farther than I normally would go because, suddenly, there was this big interest," Lehmann said. "I was telling the city that people are serious about it."

Although Klempnauer's writing campaign has yielded dozens of letters, three-quarters of the writers live outside of the city. "We have no political base," Klempnauer says, who lives in nearby Capitola, Calif. "What we say is not going to affect votes in the city of Santa Cruz."

 

1954 photo (LK)

The future of the Cross Roads building ultimately rests in the hands of an elected body: the Santa Cruz City Council. The park development, which will determine the fate of the Cross Roads building, is currently going through an environmental impact review process, which includes public hearings.

Whatever the council decides, the building has at least another five to seven years of life. That's how long it will take to plan a demolition, according to Ken Thomas of the city's planning department.

During that time, the group intent on saving the Cross Roads might raise the money needed to buy the building or convince someone else to buy it, Lehmann said. For example, the group could try to convince a company like Bob's Big Boy to add the building to its restaurant chain.

"It would be really lovely if the building was incorporated [into the park] and became a hot dog stand or something," said Lehmann. "We seem to recycle everything else, but we're not as diligent about recycling buildings."

Carlos Castillo is a writer and filmmaker based in Aptos, Calif. He can be reached at aptoscarlos@hotmail.com.

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