There is a renewed fight over the future of the Santee Drive-in.
Last December, ABC 10News reported about the iconic East County landmark closing its doors after 65 years. The owners said in a press release that it wasn't "economically viable" to keep open any longer.
The owners also announced they were planning to sell the property to a Los Angeles-based real estate development company, North Palisade Partners, and they plan to build "a state-of-the-art building that will serve to attract new businesses to east county San Diego."
However, one UC San Diego student wants to put a stop to the sale.
Gage Swaner started a petition on Change.org called "Save Santee Drive-in," in which he proposes to turn the property into a historical landmark.
Swaner also has another vision for how the drive-in could still continue to serve it's community in an arts and culture capacity.
"I personally want to take the lead to try and turn this into a community hub for Santee," Swaner said. "Whether that be more things that have to do with music and art and culture to, to car meets, to training schools to film festivals, to all these different things. There's so much potential here."
Swaner knows all those ideas are possible because just six months ago, he put on this event for his music collective, Omens, and it drew in a thousand attendees.
Swaner said he is close with the owners of the drive-in, The Fortes, and he also has fond memories of the drive-in and swap me over the years. That is why he cannot imagine the property looking any different, let alone, being potentially turned into an industrial center.
"When we heard that the drive was going to be sold, it was heartbreaking, and we tried to see if we could do something about it," Swaner said.
That's why Swaner started the petition.
The petition explains what a historical landmark designation by the City of Santee would do.
The petition states: "This would provide additional protections for development, eligibility for more environmental regulations, and ultimately weigh out Amazon."
At this point, it is still not confirmed if Swaner's speculations are true about the drive-in being converted to an Amazon distribution center.
ABC 10News has reached out to North Palisade Partners to confirm if they intend to lease the property to Amazon, and is still waiting to hear back.
"Once enough people care about it and it's presented to the city council, they have to review it for nomination and if they decide that it's eligible," Swaner said.
The petition has a couple thousand signatures as of now, but by December, Swaner wants 6,000 signatures for when he plans to talk to Mayor John Minto at a city council meeting.
"The Santee population is 60,000 people," Swaner said. "So I figured 10% of the population would be enough to show some kind of significance that the people around here care about this property and want to stay."
