Food without the TSA hassle

Those who crave the taste of airport food without the bother of navigating Transportation Security Administration checkpoints may soon have a new option, according to a request for qualifications issued March 24 by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. The agency is seeking “qualified firms, joint ventures, or individuals for the development and operation of a stand-alone, drive-thru, food and beverage facility along Pacific Highway.”

McDonald’s and San Diego–based competitor Jack in the Box apparently need not apply. “The concept of the Development would be a specialty food and beverage facility similar to a full service coffee shop, not fast food restaurant chains,” says the document. The size of the site “is approximately 17,000 square feet and is located at 2980 Pacific Highway in a mixed-use neighborhood with close proximity to public transit.”

Free entertainment is to be provided by nearby airport activity. “Adjacent to the site, the Authority is in the design stage of developing a public observation park that will be funded and constructed by the Authority with an estimated completion date of Spring/Summer 2017,” the notice says. “The Park is envisioned as a multi-faceted space in an urban context. The Park will increase the appeal of the newly landscaped area of Pacific Highway for pedestrians, and provide the public with a unique site from which to observe aircraft approaching and departing the Airport’s runway.”

The return of eating and drinking to the Pacific Highway location would repeat history. In the 1970s, the popular World War I motif watering hole Boom Trenchard’s Flare Path served as a discreet rendezvous for old Navy buddies Jerry A. Whitworth and John A. Walker Jr., convicted in the 1980s of spying for the Soviet Union. Then, in December 1989, a Gulfstream G-3 executive jet revving for takeoff on the nearby tarmac blew out a giant plate-glass window in what had been renamed the Copacabana, sending eight patrons to hospitals with minor injuries.

According to an account in the Los Angeles Times, “At least one piece of glass was propelled with such force that it embedded in a wall 15 feet away from the window, witnesses said.” The building was subsequently demolished and the area, now designated for the new park, became a parking lot.