Bucking the Trendy

Greta Weiner says all that glitters isn’t gold.

Certainly not in Sherman Oaks, where she is the last holdout against a glitzy make-over that has turned part of a dowdy business district into the San Fernando Valley’s newest trendy shopping zone.

Weiner’s 750-square-foot gift shop is bordered by a neon-accented, one-hour photo lab on one side and a gleaming yogurt bar on the other.

Eleven other neighbors in her retail strip in the 14500 block of Ventura Boulevard have an equally high-tech chrome-and-glass look and a franchised identity.

In contrast, Weiner’s shop is the only one with hand-painted plywood signs and an old-fashioned display window trimmed with artificial stone and shaded by an aluminium awning that went out of style in the 1950s.

And Weiner is the only merchant on the street who has fought to keep it looking that way.

Her 15-year-old Jerusalem Fair gift shop is in a string of 14 stores that have undergone a $1.5-million face lift in a revitalization of the north side of Ventura west of Van Nuys Boulevard.

The remodeling started last year when leases expired for 13 of the shops in the 50-year-old commercial block.

As the old merchants moved out, workmen moved in. They ripped away the storefronts and junked each shop’s faded awning.

The hodgepodge of plaster and stone facades gave way to an expanse of crisp, flat glass. An angular front wall with an Art Deco look of green marble, glass brick and maroon and beige tile was installed atop the entire length of the strip.

The transformation occurred everywhere--except at Weiner’s shop.

Her lease didn’t expire last year like those of other shopkeepers. When workmen showed up to modernize her store, she told them to get lost.

“A modern front of chrome or whatever would have been totally out of place here,” Weiner said. “A neon look is definitely not the look for my store. This is not a place for flash.”

After workmen mistakenly peeled off the veneer of artificial stone from the front of her store and yanked down her old aluminum awning and plywood sign, she made her landlord put it all back.

Masons were called to install brand-new artificial stone that looked like the old. Workmen hunted for a manufacturer who could fabricate a new awning that was identical to the old one.

They reattached her wooden sign to the front of the store and, when it blew down in a windstorm and fell through the new awning, replaced it--and installed another new old-looking awning.

Weiner says familiar trappings fit her religious-oriented gift shop like a comfortable old glove.

Landlord Richard Gleitman says they make her place stick out like a sore thumb.

“When she moves out, we will make it conform,” said Gleitman, a co-owner of the commercial strip.

The remodeling project was necessary because the wood-frame buildings “were totally deteriorating,” Gleitman said. “They were built in the 1930s. It was almost appropriate to tear them down.

“After she moves out, we will restore her portion to conform to the balance of the center. We’ve left hers just like it was.”

Gleitman said the new look ties in nicely with the tony merchandisers who are turning the area into a pedestrian-oriented street, which is becoming known as “the new Melrose” and “the Valley’s Westwood.”

New stores on the boulevard include a trendy Banana Republic clothing outlet at an Art Deco shopping center created out of the defunct La Reina movie theater, a Sharper Image gadget shop and a Johnny Rockets hamburger restaurant.

The businesses are attracting a younger crowd to what had been Sherman Oaks’ oldest retail district. But not everyone likes the change.

“It’s horrible. It’s taking away all the charm of individual stores,” said Susan Brandis, whose husband owned a jewelry store in the block until the remodeling forced him out.

“We had to hunt 10 blocks to the east to find a tiny individual store that hasn’t yet been taken over by a corporate monster,” Brandis said. “Individual merchants are being squeezed out.”

Jerusalem Fair shopper Rabbi Sheldon Weltman of Temple B’nai Hayim in Sherman Oaks predicted that the new stores will have to change their look in a few years to stay trendy.

“Part of Sherman Oaks is starting to remind me of Beverly Hills,” said Alan Muscatel, who said he dodged falling boards to shop at Weiner’s during the remodeling. “I quite frankly like the old-fashioned stores.”

Said Bobbie Robin, an Encino resident who has shopped at Weiner’s store since it opened: “There is no warmth to a place that looks like a space-ship model. I hope Greta stays here forever.”

That’s not likely, Weiner said.

Despite a sign in her display window that boasts, “We’re Here to Stay,” Weiner will move at the end of August, when her lease expires. She said she doesn’t know where she will take her 5,000 imported pieces of Israeli gift ware and religious items when the remodelers finally move in.

“It will be like I never existed,” she said.