Quail Canyon Inn owners pull papers to rebuild popular biker
bar
Morgan Hill – Six months after the Quail Canyon Inn disintegrated in a suspicious fire, its owners have applied to rebuild the Chesbro Reservoir landmark.
“If everything goes right, maybe it will be done by Christmas of this year,” said Dan Roth, a close friend of Ray and Georgia Jeffers, the owners of the Quail and the JD Pour House in south San Jose. “Everybody is extremely excited and everybody’s optimistic. It can’t be reopened quick enough for us.”
The Quail Inn dates back to at least the 1940s and was a hugely popular watering hole with locals who stopped in for a pint after work, and bikers who used the Quail as a way station as they traveled between San Jose and South County and the coast line.
The fire began late the night of Aug. 31. The blaze was extinguished before it spread to the dry grasses of the surrounding hillsides. A cause was never found and the California Department Of Forestry and Fire Prevention has labeled the fire suspicious and said it may have been purposely set.
The fire fed the Quail’s notoriety as a dangerous place, a reputation that has grown in the 13 years the Jeffers owned the inn. To many people, the Quail was a bar full of biker and other rowdies, drinkin’, cussin’ and fightin’.
But since the blaze, Quail regulars have defended the bar as a family-friendly watering hole where trouble was never welcome.
“Just by being a bar, it attracted people who drink, and bikers have bad reps,” said Cheri Folena, who patronized the Quail with her husband for 20 years. “I never saw any fights, ever. People stopped in there to chat, have a beer and a burger and go on their way.”
Since the fire, the local biker community has been frequenting the Pour House and other bars, but Folena said those places don’t match the Quail for character and camaraderie.
“Other places just don’t have the same feel. That was the only local pit stop. We’d see people we hadn’t seen in years,” Folena said. “It was fun to hangout on weekends. There’d always be a barbecue and a game on the TV. They make the most marvelous beans.”
Roth said the fire occurred just before a planned fundraising event to buy uniforms for volunteer firefighters. The inn was a critical meeting spot residents during the 2002 Croy Road fire.
The Jeffers could not be reached for comment, but Roth, who is familiar with the plans for the new Quail, said it will be the same as the old Quail, aside from windows to provide panoramic views of the lake.
“It will be very similar as far as the look of the building. The same kind of wood, the footprint of the building will be the same,” said Roth, who was considering buying the bar before the fire. “It will have a horse shoe shaped bar and a lot of viewpoints of the lake.”
The Jeffers submitted an application to rebuild earlier this month. The couple did collect an insurance payment on the inn, but Roth declined to discuss any specific financial information. The couple will meet with county planners in the next few weeks.
The planner in charge of the project was not available for comment. Another planning office official said in the past that the Jeffers will have to make many changes to the design to comply with planning and building requirements that didn’t exist when the original building was erected. The Quail will have to meet Americans With Disabilities Act regulations and county rules that could mean expensive upgrades to the inn’s septic system. The inn was also located in an area that now has strict limits on the size of bars and restaurants.
“Because it’s a brand new building, we are going to have those issues,” Roth said.
