The future of the Left Bank Bookstore and the Lantern House Restaurant is in doubt as a result of the sale of the building on the southwest corner of Skinker and Delmar Boulevards to Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.
The building was once slated to be the site of a Jack-in-the-Box drive-in restuarant before community opposition led Ralston Purina Co. to drop the plan just over a year ago.
A spokesman for the telephone company confirmed the purchase of the building last week, saying that the company planned to demolish the structure to make way for the construction of a parking lot for employees who work at the company office at 6214 Delmar.
The sale took place about a month ago, the spokesman said. He said that the company had no definite date set for demolition but that “an arrangement will be made so that the tenants will be able to relocate without hardship.”
Southwestern Bell has not given formal notice of the sale or its plans to either Left Bank or the Lantern House, and both establishments said they would like to remain in the Delmar-Skinker area but that no alternate locations have been found.
One of the eight persons who owns the bookstore said, “we’d prefer to stay here, but we’re looking for another location in the area. We think that this area needs a bookstore and a restaurant more than a parking lot.”
A spokesman for the Lantern House who food was described just a year ago by Esquire’s food critic as one of the six best Chinese meals he had ever had – said that the restaurant is also seeking another location in the Skinker-Delmar area but that no possible site had yet been found. He said the restaurant would move out of the immediate area if necessary.
No protest movement has yet formed similar to the one that successfully blocked the construction of a drive-in restaurant on the site a year ago.
Ralston Purina, which owned the building previously, had announced plans to build a Jack-in-the-Box “drive-through” restaurant there last year, but neighborhood residents – including members of the Rosedale-Skinker and Skinker-DeBaliviere associations – protested.
After several meetings with representatives of Foodmaker Inc., the Ralston subsidiary that manages the drive-in chain, the residents finally met with the president of Ralston Purina on March 11, 1970, to express their opposition to the company’s plans. The company announced eleven days later that it had dropped the idea.
At the time, Donald Knoesel, a local Foodmaker spokesman, said that “Ralston Purina and Foodmaker will be working with responsible citizens in the area to properly handle the disposition of the property.”
Asked whether proposals by area residents that the building be turned over to a nonprofit neighborhood group were under consideration, Knoesel replied, “very possibly.”
Richard Hart, Skinker-DeBaliviere area resident who has been active in the campaign to save the Skinker-Delmar corner, said that Ralston Purina did not participate actively with residents in determining the fate of the building. “I wrote a letter to them after the restaurant plan was dropped, but they never answered,” he said.
Hart said of the telephone company’s plan, “Most people behind the opposition to the Jack-in-the-Box feel that a parking lot is better than a drive-in restaurant on that corner.”
Hart said also that the original protesters conceded that “the building as it stands has no commercial value.”
Hart said that the telephone company has demonstrated the need for a parking lot because many employees quit their jobs within three months for reasons such as the lack of parking facilities.
A group of area residents is working with Lantern House in an attempt to find the restaurant different facilities in the Skinker-Delmar area but has had no success so far, Hart said.
Originally published in The Paper, April 1971.
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Original source: SD_Times1971_04.pdf, printed page 1.
