Looted Deli Moves to Chatsworth : Rebuilding: Customers follow Giovanni Roberto’s restaurant west after April’s riots. Not all its Panorama City neighbors have rebounded.

The San Carlo Deli was a Panorama City fixture for 25 years until it was gutted by flames and looted twice during last April’s unrest.

It recently reopened--not at Parthenia Street and Cedros Avenue but in a new location in tonier and, in the owner’s opinion, safer Chatsworth. Now the family-run business is struggling to rebuild its customer base.

Many customers have followed the deli to its new location, and co-owner Giovanni Roberto has found that some longtime fans had moved to the west side of the San Fernando Valley years before he did.

On a recent day of business, new customers mixed with old ones.

“They’ve got everybody I work with hooked since they opened up,” said Eddie Hernandez, who works nearby at EZ Sportswear. “They’ve overcome us with their food.”

“It reminds me of my grandmother’s kitchen,” said John Sintich, 25, of Chatsworth, who stopped by for a sandwich on his lunch break.

Sintich and his parents started shopping in the former location in the early 1970s and have continued as customers ever since, while Hernandez and his co-workers first noticed the deli a couple weeks ago.

In Panorama City, the deli also was a big hangout for police and Roberto said many still drive across the Valley to eat at the new spot.

However, Roberto’s apparent success story does not extend to other businesses that were the deli’s neighbors in the mini-mall at Cedros Avenue and Parthenia Street, according to the building’s co-owner, George Rechnitzer of Beverly Hills. Half of the mini-mall was destroyed.

Two of the five businesses haven’t reopened at all, Rechnitzer said. One remains open but is struggling and the fifth, a church, is holding services in members’ homes.

Unrest in the Valley generally occurred between the night of April 30 and the morning of May 1--a full 24 hours after widespread violence and looting broke out downtown and in South Los Angeles. A mob of about 200 people looted business after business along the northern end of Van Nuys Boulevard until driven away by police.

City officials could not give any estimates of the cost of riot-related destruction in the Valley alone, but about 63 buildings were set on fire or vandalized here, which pales next to the massive destruction in other areas.

“It was a peculiar mix of circumstances” that led to the delayed reaction in the Valley and left it less damaged than other areas, theorized Dan Dufour, manager of Valley Indoor Swap Meet at Tobias Avenue and Parthenia Street. The swap meet was looted--but not burned--by the mob.

“It was just a matter of people sitting around for 24 hours watching people on TV get things for free downtown when they realized they could do it here too,” Dufour said. “We’re fortunate that the people who hit us were just thieves and they didn’t burn us down.”

Only a few of the riot fires in the Valley gutted buildings--among them the mini-mall where the San Carlo Deli was located and a dental office building across the street.

For months after the unrest, a charred hulk was all that remained of the dental office building at 14702 Parthenia. Last week the dental building was leveled.

“I’ve got permits and I’m ready to go but I haven’t gotten any money from Uncle Sam,” said owner Jeff Michaels. “We hope to get it soon. I had to pay for demolition. I want to put in a retail-type building.”

Michaels declined to discuss his difficulties further.

Across the street, the mini-mall is being renovated inside, although one wall still contains bullet holes from an incident May 1 when a looter fired at a reporter.

“None of the old tenants are coming back so far,” said Rechnitzer. “We’re losing money right now, but we’re going to hang onto the property.

“I believe in my heart that most people there are really good,” he said. “Businesses can’t just fold up and walk away. If that happens, the whole area will become a slum like the South Bronx, where all you have is boarded-up buildings.”

One tenant in the building, Clean Scene Laundry Center, was not hurt by the flames that damaged the rest of the building and has remained open.

Laundry owner Gregory Zhivalyuk said his insurance company canceled his policy after the unrest and he was forced to switch companies and pay higher premiums for less coverage. He has also added extra security measures including iron gates.

“Things are OK here, we’re doing pretty good,” Zhivalyuk said.

Zhivalyuk said he has no plans to follow Roberto and his deli to the West Valley. “They don’t need many Laundromats in Chatsworth,” he said.

Many Valley businesses that were trashed during the unrest reopened in the same locations. This is largely because the current economic recession and tight credit situation left them with few options, several business owners said.

Henrietta Royzman, 42, owner of A & A Pawn Shop at 13168 Van Nuys Blvd. in Pacoima, suffered $26,000 in damage when her store was burned and looted. Despite reservations, she reopened in June.

“I’ve got no choice. I own the building,” said Royzman. “I first opened in March. Then a month later, boom, it’s all gone. I owe too much money to walk away.”

Royzman’s business has survived solely through the help of her friends, she said. Like most business people interviewed, she complained about federal, state and local agencies that are supposed to be helping riot-stricken businesses.

“This reminds me of the Soviet Union,” said Royzman, who immigrated from Moscow in 1981. “You fill out papers, papers, papers and more papers but none of this does anything for you.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) said the Valley has been overlooked in post-riot plans and for some of the assistance programs because the unrest was not so severe here.

“The frustrating thing about the Valley is that because it didn’t burn like other parts of L.A., it’s hard to get programs focused here,” said Katz, who is planning to run for mayor. “It’s like we’ve been penalized for not burning enough. People in Pacoima have worked hard to avoid any damage and to improve relations after the King beating.”

Just days before the unrest, Katz had named deli owner Roberto the business person of the year in the 39th District. Roberto was presented with the award on May 15, while his deli sat in ruins.

“I’ve always liked him--the weight I’ve gained has a lot to with his place,” said Katz, who said he has been a regular customer at the deli since 1980. “It’s a neighborhood business, a family business and an immigrant success story. I think he’s also a great example of someone getting back on his feet again.”

Valley residents who owned businesses in other parts of Los Angeles also suffered from the riots. David Yaghoubzadeh, 33, of Reseda watched as his Retail 98 store “burned to nothing” in a fire that gutted a mini-mall just north of the USC campus. When interviewed several days after the unrest, Yaghoubzadeh was optimistic about rebuilding, saying, “I hope to be back on my feet in a month or so.”

Since then, he has received a loan from the federal Small Business Administration, but the Iranian immigrant said he has been unable to reopen at the same site because the mini-mall has not been rebuilt. On Oct. 11, he started anew at a different location, in Koreatown.

Yaghoubzadeh remained stoic, though he said he has mixed feelings about going back into business in Los Angeles. “I’m optimistic,” he said. “Things can’t get any worse, as far as the bitterness among people here.”

But then he added: “So many people are without jobs. It’s very bad here. But I’m not ready to give up.”