Bill Lynch: Chickens coming home to roost

There is a direct Sonoma connection between burgers and blowers (leaf blowers that is). The connection is retired Sonoma businessman, Jerry Marino.

Jerry recently completed a petition drive to place a referendum on the ballot that could repeal the City of Sonoma’s recently passed ban on gas-powered leaf blowers.

I’ve known Jerry since we were at Sonoma Valley High School together more than 50 years ago. I am fairly certain that he has no particular interest in leaf-blowers or landscape gardening, but he has been at war with the City of Sonoma for nearly 30 years, ever since the city wouldn’t let him put the fast-food giant Burger King on his property at the end of West Napa Street.

Marino’s burger connection dates back to at least 1983 when the property he owned at the corner of Verano Avenue and Highway 12 was developed for a McDonald’s.

Five years later, in 1987, Jerry announced a plan to put a Burger King on his property on West Napa Street, across from the El Pueblo Inn. The site then included the small “New Mexico” restaurant. The proposed Burger King would have been a much larger, 2,700-square-foot structure, plus parking, plus drive-through lane.

At the time of the announcement, Ed Steinbeck, Sonoma City Planner, suggested that the project would be very controversial and a major traffic generator. Marino argued that the traffic was already there and his decision to put the Burger King there was because he believed the Mexican restaurant wasn’t going to make it.

It should be noted that today, almost 30 years later, there is still a Mexican restaurant there. It appears to be doing just fine. In any case, Steinbeck was right. From day one, the proposal was very controversial. A group of Sonoma residents formed “Block Burger King,” and for the next two years, the proposal bounced back and forth between the city planning commission, city council, Marino and Burger King’s representatives. Debate was sometimes nasty.

The City eventually insisted that the project would need a full-blown EIR, with estimated costs ranging from $15,000 to $30,000. Marino fought back, and insisted that the some people in city government were biased and shouldn’t be allowed to vote on his proposal.

The City would not back down from its insistence on an EIR. Sometime in late 1989, it withdrew the developer’s application, and the issue faded away.

But there is no doubt that the City’s action stuck in Jerry’s craw.

And speaking of craws, several years later, his car wash behind the proposed Burger King site became ground zero for the beginning of the infamous feral chicken controversy, which led to chickens in the Plaza and half-serious protest rallies supporting Jerry’s rights to have feral chickens at his car wash.

Until the time of that flap-doodle, I had never known Jerry to have much interest in poultry, and I concluded this was just another way he was getting back at the city for killing his Burger King dreams.

Jerry lost the chicken battle too.

But clearly, he has not forgotten, or forgiven.

In spite of the fact that virtually nobody who was on the city council or in city government from 1987 to 1989 during the Burger King controversy is in city hall today, Jerry’s war, whether it be burgers, chickens or blowers, goes on.