One Family’s Sad Saga

Mike Townsend knows why most of the mom-and-pop businesses have disappeared from the streets of downtown La Jolla like so many footprints at the nearby shore.

He knows why the tiny, service-oriented shops that once gave La Jolla its small-town charm have been systematically replaced by chi-chi boutiques and highbrow retail chain stores.

The slow death of the quaint family-run business in the affluent seaside town has hit the former La Jolla Town Council president close to home--because one of those displaced families was his own.

For 11 years, Townsend, his parents, two brothers and sister ran Geri’s Liquors, a thriving family enterprise on Pearl Street named after his mother. Business was so good that in the mid-80s the family opened a second store three blocks away.

The store, in the very heart of La Jolla, was father Jerry Townsend’s dream come true. In the early 1970s, he had sat

the family down in Kansas City to tell them of his big plans.

California, he said, was the place to start a family enterprise because that’s where the growth was--in the land of unlimited opportunity. But, he told his family, he needed all the Townsends working together to achieve success.

For a while, the Townsends indeed lived the California Dream. Working with his parents and siblings--even 60 hours a week--was fun, Mike Townsend said.

After running a 7-Eleven store in Chula Vista for three years, the family made its move to La Jolla, unaware that their fledgling business empire would eventually meet an obstacle not even family togetherness could overcome--a roadblock that would one day spell the end for both Geri’s and Geri’s West.

When it was all over, all the family but Mike would return to the Midwest--where the parents would open a sandwich shop on the banks of the Mississippi River called Grandpa’s Train Station.

“Here we thought we had our future set, our lives laid out for us,” said the 33-year-old Townsend. “We were going to open a chain of liquor stores throughout La Jolla. Eventually, all six kids were going to own one. And then, boom, the rug is pulled out from under us.”

Two years ago, the landlord who owned Geri’s decided to double the family’s rent while cutting their space in half. Suddenly, the Townsends’ liquor business was reduced to one store, a single shop that couldn’t support the six people.

“My mother just decided one day that she’d rather be a big fish in a small pond,” Townsend said. “Suddenly, it looked like we were going to have to work for our landlord for the rest of our lives. The whole thing just took its toll on both of my parents.”

What happened to the Townsends is symptomatic of a trend that has begun sweeping small, family-run businesses from the streets of the downtown retail district--forcing some out of business and moving others to less desirable locations within La Jolla, merchants say.

Many merchants blame spiraling rents, which are gladly paid by wealthy boutique owners who are running a business more as a hobby than in the hope of turning a profit, or by businesses that can afford to pay the rents--which have recently approached $7 a square foot in some locations.

The turnover, merchants say, is robbing La Jolla of its service-oriented businesses--the hardware stores, drug and toy stores, restaurant and shoe repair shops that gave the downtown area the distinct flavor of Main Street, America.

Now, some disgruntled merchants say, the most picturesque retail area in Southern California is turning into little more than an expensive tourist trap.

But some real estate brokers say La Jolla’s business climate is merely making a few natural adjustments that, in the long run, will be healthy for the vitality of the area.

“Some of these old places represent the La Jolla of 30 years ago,” said Mike Slattery, a commercial real estate specialist with Coldwell Banker in La Jolla. “It’s a La Jolla that just doesn’t exist anymore.”

Fred Scott is the latest La Jolla merchant to discover that cruel fact of business life.

Not long ago, his venerable downtown clothing store that bears the family name closed its doors after more than a generation of outfitting children not only from La Jolla, but from San Diego, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.

In recent years, Scott had adjusted his inventory to appeal to a broader clientele and even subleased space in his 7,000-square-foot store to a sporting goods dealer.

But apparently even that wasn’t enough to stave off what has come to be the inevitable for many of downtown La Jolla’s family-run businesses. On Dec. 31, Scott locked up his shop for the last time.

Scott said he was still too upset to talk about the fate of his business. But other veteran shop owners say the closing troubles them.

“I’ve seen it happen before--it’s absolutely the most horrible thing that could ever happen to this community,” said Leon Cronkright, who has run Mitchell’s coin shop on Girard Avenue for the past 26 years.

“It’s just landlord greed, pure and simple. They’re driving rents up to an outrageously unaffordable level. Twenty years ago, La Jolla was a nice little beach community; everybody knew each other. Now it’s a greedy bunch of cutthroats knocking each other over to make a buck.”

Some merchants say the La Jolla business graveyard is filled not only with mom-and-pop shops but specialty boutiques that were started as a hobby and tax write-off, not as a legitimate business.

“So many people come in here with the idea of making a killing just because they’ve got a space in downtown La Jolla,” said Alexander Bende, who runs a local perfume and cosmetics store.

“But it just doesn’t happen overnight. Unless you’ve got the capital and business savvy to stick it out a few years, you’re not going to make it.”

Many of those get-rich-quick specialty stores are contributing to downtown La Jolla’s out-of-sight rents, Cronkright said. “The wives of all the lead surgeons at Scripps Institute shell out any price these landowners ask to get that downtown La Jolla shop front.

“That way, they can show their husbands what good girls they are and can impress their friends. Well, if they’d put their checkbooks away for once, the rents wouldn’t be so high.”

In the meantime, along with his civic duties and a fledgling promotional business, Mike Townsend has taken a part-time clerk’s job at a local liquor store--just because he missed the daily experience of working with the public behind the counter.

His job, however, is ending soon, he says. A Korean firm has purchased the property and is closing the store to open another business.

Like other properties, the liquor store site is now in the hands of out-of-town interests who are more interested in turning a profit than seeing La Jolla retain its down-home character.