There Goes the Dream
Arrie Allen isn’t the kind of guy you figure is ever going to tower over the world of business. The dream he had didn’t even hint at empire.
A quiet, middle-aged man with an unassuming manner, he sought modest goals. His aim was more associated with economic security than financial conquest.
A shoeshine stand falls into that category.
His grandfather had a stand in Seattle and Arrie always wanted one too. Instead, he went to sea with the Merchant Marine and then to work for Amtrak and let the dream slip away for a while.
But it was always in the back of his mind. Then in 1985 he was injured in a train accident and two years later underwent angioplasty, and the dream seemed more compelling.
It was getting near the time he’d want to leave a full-time job and open the shoeshine stand he’d always thought about. And he had come up with the perfect spot: L.A.’s Union Station.
When he was ready to give up his steady job, the shoeshine stand would be in place near the trains he loved. It would be perfect.
He took his idea to the giant Catellus Development Corp., owners of the ornate old station, and the people at Catellus agreed.
To Arrie’s joy, a deal was made. He could set up a stand in the northeast corner of the station for $400 a month and 5% of anything over $5,000.
He was told there might not be a lot of profit at first, but in a few months the Metro Rail link would open and 5,000 customers an hour would pass through the station during commute periods.
Arrie Allen, taping his palm with a forefinger, had the dream right there.
*
But peril abounds in dreams come true. There is no guarantee of happy-ever-after. Arrie Allen would learn that.
The deal he signed was for three months. It was an “agreement,” not a lease. A lease has a more binding quality. Agreements are blown away like autumn leaves.
As he looks back on it, Arrie says he was a fool to enter into anything with a three-month termination date. He did it because he felt this was the start of something good.
Hadn’t they told him the Metro Rail link was coming and he’d be around to cash in on the renaissance of the grand old Union Station? Didn’t that imply permanence?
Arrie and his wife opened the stand last June. He built the four-seat structure with the help of a friend.
It’s got to be the neatest shoe stand in any train station, bus depot or airport I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in a lot of them.
A shoeshine stand, like a coffee shop, is a tradition in places where people travel, and Union Station hadn’t had one in a long time. It seemed a perfect situation.
Arrie is not a selfish man, and when good fortune smiled on him, he looked around to smile on someone else. He began hiring the homeless through the Weingart Center as a way of paying God back.
One of the homeless men I talked with calls Arrie a lifesaver, and I’ve got the feeling he isn’t talking in metaphors.
Then the ax fell. Last month, for reasons he still can’t figure out, the Catellus Corp. decided it didn’t want Arrie’s stand there anymore.
The termination letter said simply, “Due to the minimal revenues, I cannot justify the continuation of this license.” It was signed by an “asset manager” of Catellus.
Arrie shook his head slowly. “There goes the dream.”
*
What with rent and wages, Arrie has lost about $5,000 in the three months he’s been there, but he expected that. Like the Catellus people told him, the big money would come next month, when a commuter service is expected to begin over Amtrak lines.
Now it probably won’t come at all. “They made him do all the work,” a customer said the day I talked to Arrie, “and now they’re taking away the gravy.”
Arrie tried to reason with Catellus but they won’t be reasoned with. I called someone in the corporation who seemed startled that Arrie was being kicked out and said she’d look into it. But there’s not much hope the decision will be reversed.
“They’re a big company,” Arrie says, “and they chew up little guys like me every day.”
This was to have been the first of three shoeshine stands. Arrie wanted to open one in Oakland and San Diego, and maybe someday even Seattle, where his granddaddy’s stand initiated the dream. Now?
Well, he’s looking around for another place in downtown L.A., but it won’t be the same as being where the trains are.
“Maybe there’s something better down the road,” Arrie says.
He tries to be uplifting, but the look in his eyes belies the effort. The look says it all. There goes the dream.
