Inconvenienced Store : Simi to Cut Open Median Blocking Access to Market

After running a busy 7-Eleven store for more than a decade, Steve Bloch decided to launch his own mini-mart empire. He opened his Market Time shop at one of Simi Valley’s busiest corners and waited for the parking lot to fill up with customers.

Two years later, Market Time’s lot still has plenty of empty spaces. Bloch says the raised medians that separate traffic on the streets outside his shop also separate him from his customers.

In an emotional plea at Monday’s City Council meeting, Bloch begged Simi Valley officials to cut open a median on Tapo Canyon Road to make it easier for shoppers to pull into the Market Time lot.

“I have a business that’s failing. I’m behind in my rent,” the shop owner told the council. “We’re a convenience store that is not convenient.”

City traffic officials urged the council to deny Bloch’s request, citing safety and liability concerns.

But council members sided with Bloch. They ordered the staff to cut a gap in the median, just south of Cochran Street, to help keep his business alive.

“I think traffic engineers are always ultraconservative,” Mayor Greg Stratton said Tuesday. “For them, in a perfect world, no one would be able to make left turns except at signalized intersections with a left-turn arrow.”

Bloch, 36, believes that the council tossed a lifeline toward his ailing market. “I know I’m going to gain business because of what the council did,” the store owner said.

The thin, bearded businessman said he has been a Simi Valley resident since 1962. He has owned a thriving 7-Eleven market for 15 years on Erringer Road and Cochran Street, but because it is a franchise, he must share the profits.

Hoping to launch his own chain of stores, he leased space for a Market Time two years ago at a new mini-mall on the southwest corner of Tapo Canyon and Cochran. “It was my first stab at independence,” he said. “I knew that was the hottest corner in Simi Valley.”

He also knew that Tapo Canyon was about to be extended south to connect with one of Simi Valley’s other main streets, Los Angeles Avenue. That connection would bring even more customers to the intersection, he believed.

But the street extension was delayed by complex negotiations over a railroad crossing, and two years later, Tapo Canyon Road still ends a few blocks south of the store.

Meanwhile, Bloch discovered that some shoppers were having trouble getting in and out of the Market Time center because of the raised medians. Motorists could only enter if they were driving east on Cochran or south on Tapo Canyon. They could only exit by making a right turn out of one of the two driveways.

The store owner said a Simi Valley police officer recently said he couldn’t stop for coffee at Market Time because it would be too difficult to get out if he received an emergency call.

Two other stores in the shopping center are vacant, and Bloch believes that poor access is to blame.

Bloch said his business suffered another blow this summer when the city posted a “No U-Turn” sign on Tapo Canyon immediately south of Market Time, making it even more inconvenient for shoppers. “I had a 25% drop in business when that sign went up,” the store owner said.

After he protested, city officials temporarily halted the U-turn ban, but they said it will be restored when the Tapo Canyon extension is finished in September.

When that happens, the traffic volume on Tapo Canyon will jump from 1,900 to 14,000 cars and trucks a day, city officials predict.

Bloch is hoping that the added traffic and the new median break will give his business a boost.

Yet the future of the shopping center that it anchors remains uncertain. The center’s owner, Steve Minnick, urged the council Monday to approve a new U-turn pocket south of Market Time. The council refused, saying the median break was sufficient.

Minnick told city officials that he is already $150,000 in debt because of unpaid rent and unleased stores at the center. “We are very close to wrapping a construction fence around the project and turning it over to the city,” he said.

But Councilwoman Judy Mikels, who served on the Planning Commission when the center was approved, said Tuesday that Minnick was well aware of the potential problems.

“He is the one who made the decision to put the shopping center in a difficult location,” she said. “The difficulty of the access was fully discussed. He decided that he could make it work.”