Local business owners closing up shop blame sharp increases in rent

Locally owned Burbank businesses have been disappearing recently, a micro-trend proprietors are blaming on sharply increased rents in spots throughout the city.

On Friday, the Helping Hands for Animals Thrift Store, which has occupied a bright yellow building at the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Florence Avenue for four years, announced on Facebook that it would be moving from the location.

That follows the announcement in July that the retro shop 8 Ball on Magnolia Boulevard would be shuttering in a month’s time.

“It is with a sad heart to say that 8 Ball lost its lease and is closing,” said a message posted to the shop’s Facebook page.

About a week later, Not A Burger Stand on Riverside Drive, which advertised its specials on a chalkboard with hand-drawn art, wiped its last slate clean. A photo of the blank chalkboard was posted online below a simple thank you.

“It’s going to be a common theme,” said Matt Peek, the restaurant’s owner, regarding small business closures in Burbank.

Mary Hamzoian, the city’s economic development manager, said she hasn’t heard anything about increased business rents and said they seem to be steady in Downtown and Magnolia Park, but she said she had heard that the property owner had raised Peek’s rent “significantly,” forcing him out.

The Los Angeles-based real estate brokerage Commercial Asset Group is advertising the location at 1221 W. Riverside Drive for lease at $6,000 a month. Peek said he was paying $3,500.

Peek’s looking for a new location, he said, but he’s not sure it’ll be in Burbank, where “rental prices are crazy.” He said he knows of about 25 other business owners who are also struggling with rising rents.

In the case of Helping Hands, which donates some of its proceeds to animal charities, it was a slow July and August, which left store proprietor Simone Wunscher short on rent. She said on the store’s Facebook page and in an interview that July was the first time she’d fallen short and she pleaded with her landlord for forgiveness.

Wunscher had hoped for some leniency from the property owner again in August, she said, but instead she was asked via certified letter to vacate by the end of the year.

“I didn’t see it coming,” she said. “I have no plan B here.”

She said she was grateful to have three months to figure out her next step, but she said inventory for retail space in the area is low and “everything is really, really expensive.” Meanwhile, “here I am [with] 4,500 square feet of merchandise and don’t know what to do.”

Her landlord, Robert Stelling, said she’d been short in the past and he feels he’d been accommodating and wanted her to thrive “[so] we thrive.” However, he said he had also recommended she move to a smaller location that might better suit her a few times in the past.

Stelling said he forgave the shortfall “one time only” in July, and in August Wunscher indicated that she was willing to throw in the towel, which he said “shocked” him, and that’s when he asked her to vacate.

She said she realizes she made a mistake and probably should have paid the full August rent rather than plead for forbearance. She said it’s been harder to make the rent payments of more than $4,800 in recent months since they increased from around $4,400 last year.

Stelling said he feels land owners get made out to be “big bad ogres,” but he said, “there’s only so much we can do — we’ve got to pay our bills, too.”

Wunscher also pointed to other business owners that she said she’s heard are struggling with increasing rents, such as Pet Mania on North Pass Avenue, which is clearing out of its store.

Jennifer Berardini, Pet Mania’s owner, said rent may be a factor in their closing, “but that’s between me and my landlord.” She said it’s only part of it. As to whether she will open in a new location, that’s “TBD.”

As for what she’ll do, Wunscher said she doesn’t know.

“I wish I could answer that,” she said. “I’m very desperate.”

Meanwhile, Stelling, who lives in Simi Valley, said he visited Burbank around Labor Day for the first time in a while and noticed few “for lease” signs along Burbank Boulevard, but lots of clean sidewalks and fresh paint.

“It was the best I’d seen Burbank in eons.”