Checkerboard’s Last Moves : Redevelopment: Outpouring of sentiment for old cafe fuels owner’s last stand in battle against loss of bar to billion-dollar development.
Nick Frudakis threw a party initially billed as a last farewell to the Checkerboard Cafe, the funky 55-year-old bar that his family has owned since 1951.
Sandwiched among several vacant lots in the middle of what once was the Pike, a popular amusement park that closed in 1979, the 1,500-square-foot bar is directly in the path of a billion-dollar redevelopment project that could transform the 10-acre site into a high-rise complex of hotel rooms, apartment units, offices and retail space.
For more than a year Frudakis, a lawyer, has been battling the city to prevent its taking the bar by eminent domain to make way for the project. And on Monday he had planned to peaceably turn over the bar’s keys in obedience to a court order giving the city temporary possession until a judge can decide on the merits of Frudakis’ lawsuit.
After last week’s party, however, the lawyer’s plans changed. “I’ll wait for the sheriff to show up,” he said. “They say we can’t win, but I’m going to fight.”
Part of his change of heart, Frudakis said, came from the outpouring of support he felt at the party, a gathering of longtime patrons as well as new-found friends.
One of the old-timers is Rayford James, a sometimes-carny who has been frequenting the Checkerboard for eight years. “Everybody loves this place,” said James, 59. “It’s the only place we got to go around here.”
And one of the new-found friends is Peter Apanel, founder and organizer of the annual Doo Dah Parade in Pasadena, an irreverent extravaganza that, he said, was born 12 years ago in a neighborhood bar very much like the Checkerboard.
“This represents what’s best about neighborhoods,” said Apanel. “This is grass-roots, not simply nostalgia. People gather to let off steam; there’s a real value to the entire community in having places like this.”
In fact, the Doo Dah czar said, this year’s parade--scheduled for the Sunday after Thanksgiving--will have neighborhood salvation as its theme and include a series of “memorial wreaths” to neighborhood bars throughout Los Angeles County that have been shut down as a result of redevelopment.
“I’m here to let (Frudakis) know he’s not alone,” Apanel said. “Every city has a similar situation; our whole society is becoming anti-neighborhood.”
Frudakis, for his part, says he is not ready to throw in the towel, despite predictions by some of his supporters that he will not be able to prevail against the gargantuan development that almost every official in the city seems to want.
Believed to be the oldest surviving building of the Pike, the Checkerboard, which still lists Walk of a Thousand Lights as its street address, was a bingo parlor before becoming a bar in about 1935, old-timers say. At the height of Pike activity in the 1940s, the place teemed with customers every day of the week, patrons said.
In 1951, Frudakis’ grandfather, a Greek immigrant named Nick Pulos, bought the cafe. From then until his death in 1979 he worked there seven days a week. Later, Frudakis’ mother, Katina, took over. And during the past 12 months, Frudakis has spent several thousand dollars sprucing the place up, adding historic photos and a fresh coat of paint even though the bar opens only a few times a month now that Katina has retired.
Frudakis’ challenge to the city’s condemnation proceeding is based, among other things, on the contention that the area surrounding the bar does not conform to the legal definition of a blighted area, a condition necessary for the action to proceed.
David K. Robinson, a lawyer representing the city’s Redevelopment Agency on the matter, disagrees. “Clearly the area is blighted,” he said. “There’s no question about that.”
Frudakis’ challenge has already delayed construction, which initially was slated to begin before summer. Neither side expects the issue to be resolved for at least another six months. Robinson said no decision has been made on whether the city will actually take physical possession in the meantime.
So last week, as the gathering of regulars and supporters gulped beer and sipped mineral water, no one was quite sure whether it was really the last hurrah.
“I came by to show my support,” said Cass Edison, 30, a media consultant who said it was only her second visit to the Checkerboard. “I’ve always been a supporter of underdogs.”
Sitting on a stool at the bar, meanwhile, Frudakis became philosophic about his reasons for fighting the city.
“My grandfather spent 30 years here working seven days a week,” he said. “He sent me to Berkeley to become a lawyer. This is my way of doing it for the Gipper.”
