'Mercado' Eyes Shuttered Thrift Store

Where a popular thrift store once stood along Camino Capistrano, a store stocked with verdolaga, carne ranchera and banana leaves could soon open.

Five men who currently operate Mercado El Rey in Lompoc want to grow their business into a chain of neighborhood convenience stores in cities with large Hispanic populations, such as San Juan Capistrano.

They plan to remodel the , at 32252 Camino Capistrano, where they propose to sell groceries, deli items, dairy products, personal products and beverages.

They're encountering, however, resistance from next-door business owners who say there's not enough parking spaces in the bustling shopping center—there's to the south and to the north—to accommodate the mercado.

Terence M. O'Shea of O'Shea Properties and Investments has worked in a second-floor office in the building for 29 years. In a letter to the City Council expressing his opposition to the convenience store, he said parking in that area is already "extremely limited."

"On many occasions, I have walked quite a distance to my office and have even parked across the street in either the  center or by the ," he wrote. "A 4,000-square-foot market with its issues of traffic, noise, deliveries and food product waste would make us yearn for the return of the trashy thrift store."

Dan Friess, owner of adjoining commercial property to the south, is leading a charge to uphold an appeal he won with the city's Planning Commission. Friess is also a member of an advisory board that makes recommendations to the City Council about the architecture and design of future development projects.

He convinced the commission that the store should be classified as a "food store, grocery store or supermarket," rather than "convenience store," as city staffers have deemed it.

If successful, Friess' classification would require the proposed business to have more than the existing 12 parking spaces.

In determining the appropriate classification, the City Council, which has the ultimately say in the matter, will need to decide if the mercado will generate more traffic than the thrift store did.

Planning Commissioner Ginny Kerr was one of two commissioners in the minority to oppose Friess' appeal. "It seems we got off track somewhere and looked at this as a parking issue rather than an intensification of use—which it’s not," she said.

The mercado's owners say that in a convenience store such as theirs, shoppers are in and out quickly. "They know what they want."

The owners say there will only be two checkstands and no shopping carts, only baskets, giving shoppers limited opportunity to linger. "So to compare us to a large [grocery] store, a food store, would be unfair."