It’s the Season for ‘Miracle on Pier Avenue’ : Hermosa Beach: Christmas cheer has special meaning at the Gem Cafe, as a Dec. 31 eviction date turns into a three-year lease.

Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. And when he’s not around, it leaves an awful hole, doesn’t it?

--Henry Travers to Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

This month was to have been the last for the Gem Cafe in Hermosa Beach. The Formica countertop and gingham curtains should have been gone by now. The landlord had been clear: Henry and Grace Poirier were being evicted Dec. 31, along with the neighborhood diner they have run for 28 years.

But December can be a wonderful month, as the Poiriers can attest. Because when word of the eviction got out, it occurred to the Gem’s customers that if Hermosa Beach no longer had Henry’s small talk and Grace’s homemade pies--well, it would leave an awful hole, now, wouldn’t it?

“It’s a miracle on Pier Avenue,” exulted Willis Hayes, who, with a group of other regulars, rallied around the elderly Poiriers to save the venerable cafe just in time for Christmas.

“Yep!” chimed in 65-year-old Henry Poirier from behind the horseshoe-shaped counter. “There is a Santa Claus.”

After months of legal wrangling and moral appeals to the landlords, the Poiriers this week signed a three-year lease on the property.

The fight to save the Gem dates back to May, when the eviction notice arrived in the mail. The landlords, film producer Warren Miller and his wife, Laurie, said it was regrettable, but the Poiriers had no lease and a prospective tenant willing to pay more than double the Poiriers’ rent had approached them about the site.

To the Poiriers, it meant the loss of a retirement nest egg they had counted on, and the end of the cafe they had bought in 1962 from two sisters who had run it since 1949. Henry Poirier said he and Miller had had a “gentleman’s agreement” about the $475-a-month rent, which the Poiriers had paid in cash every month since 1964, when Miller bought the building in which the cafe is located.

For the past year, Poirier said, he and his wife had been asking the Millers for a lease. They were growing older, they explained, and without a lease, they could not sell the restaurant and retire.

But the landlords refused. In an interview in June, Laurie Miller said it was too late. She said the Poiriers had been offered a lease several years ago when she began handling the property for her husband. They had turned it down, and communication had been bad since then, she said.

Consequently, she said at the time, when a prospective tenant approached her in April, she leased the space out from under the Poiriers.

Stunned, the Poiriers prepared to shut down the little cafe. Then the customers learned of their predicament. A Save the Gem Cafe committee was formed, headed by a group of local residents. Hayes, a local real estate agent, offered to buy the building. Max Wright, a Hermosa Beach actor best known for his role as the father on the NBC sitcom, “ALF,” called the newspapers to publicize the Poiriers’ plight. Richard McCurdy, a local entrepreneur, enlisted two attorney friends, who took the case for free and managed to win a reprieve of several months for the Gem.

Still, the Poiriers were under notice to leave by Dec. 31. Then, depending on whose view you take, fate or the threat of litigation stepped in.

The prospective tenant--a woman who had planned to open a “trendy California cuisine-type restaurant”--lost interest in the property, said the Millers’ lawyer, Harry Hathaway. The Save the Gem committee said she may have been frightened away by the threats and counter-threats being exchanged by lawyers on both sides.

In any case, Hathaway said, without the prospective new tenant in the picture, the Millers had a change of heart, and “they all started talking again.”

“It wouldn’t have been right, with such a long-term relationship, not to have given Henry the opportunity,” Hathaway said.

And so it was that this week, the Millers and the Poiriers signed a new, three-year lease on the property. The rent is higher, but the Poiriers will now be able to sell the restaurant and retire comfortably.

Henry Poirier said he hopes the buyers will be “a nice young couple I can train and teach everything I know.”

The Millers had no comment. But a Dec. 3 letter to the Poiriers conveyed their sentiment:

“Henry,” wrote Warren Miller, “I hope this puts all the misunderstanding behind you, so you can continue to cook instead of worry.”