Promenade Mall Beats Its Rival to the Punch : Retail: Crews working feverishly manage to open the shopping center the first weekend after the quake, before competitor Topanga Plaza.

A shaky but mostly intact Promenade mall reopened for business Saturday, getting a jump-start if not a symbolic advantage over its more successful neighbor, Topanga Plaza, which is only one block away but remains closed due to damage suffered in last week’s earthquake.

Twenty-two of the Promenade’s approximately 60 stores and restaurants were open during the weekend, with others scheduled to reopen later this week, including two of its three anchor stores, Bullocks and Saks. It is not known when I. Magnin, the third anchor store, will reopen.

Promenade manager Kim Solomon said the cost of the damage caused by the 6.6-magnitude earthquake has not been tallied but she expect’s the mall’s earthquake insurance to cover most of the cost.

Jittery earthquake survivors began trickling back to the mall on Saturday, but most merchants said business was slow over the weekend. Nevertheless, Solomon was encouraged by activity during the first weekend after the quake.

“Business was fair,” she said. “We didn’t set the world on fire, but people are ready to get their lives back to normal, and shopping is part of that.”

The 21-year-old Promenade, which underwent a $40-million renovation in 1993, came out of the earthquake in much better shape than Topanga Plaza, which is likely to remain closed for several weeks. The Promenade’s trademark skylight, which gives it a bright and airy appearance, suffered nary a crack.

Retailers and the mall’s owner, the New York-based O’Connor Group, hope the Herculean effort to bring the shopping center back to life will quickly give the Promenade a head start in its fierce competition with Topanga Plaza.

O’Connor officials are unofficially marketing the Promenade as the Rodeo Drive of the San Fernando Valley, catering to affluent shoppers with plenty of disposable income.

However, the broken windows, cracked tiles, crooked letter E on the exterior Promenade sign and upended merchandise resulting from last week’s earthquake gave the Promenade an appearance that was no different from the hundreds of other retail malls throughout the Valley that were damaged by the quake.

The only consolations to Solomon and Promenade merchants were that Topanga Plaza and other major malls in the Valley fared much worse, and that the Promenade escaped any structural damage.

“I guess we should be thankful that we’re not at Topanga Plaza. At least here when we open depends on how fast we can get this store back together,” said John Robertson, as he helped his mother, Martha Wilcox, owner of Martha’s Leg Fashions, clean the damaged store.

Late last week, an army of construction workers and cleanup crews worked with military efficiency to prepare the mall for Saturday’s scheduled opening. Platoons of workers and employees of the various stores worked at a feverish pace to sweep up debris, replace shattered windows and tiles, rehang buckled doors and restock shelves.

“People at the malls are getting organized. Work is starting to pick up. We’re working 14-hour days not just here but at strip malls throughout the Valley,” said Paul Wilson of Redondo Beach, an employee of RAS Builders. Wilson and his partner, Jose Lopez of Inglewood, were boarding up Bullocks’ second-floor entrance.

The pungent smell of garlic and pizza sauce wafted throughout the second floor. It did not take long to trace the odor to the Williams-Sonoma store, where the floor was stained and littered with olive oil, sauces and glass from broken cookware and bottles.

About half a dozen workers hired by the store were making no attempt to save anything that toppled to the floor during the quake. Using wide shovels, the workers scooped the floor clean and dumped the stuff into oversized plastic garbage cans.

“It’s garlic city, but it smells good,” said a mall employee who happened by.

Inside Williams-Sonoma, the store manager, who had been supervising the odorous cleanup for three days, joked about the pervasive smell of garlic, herbs and spices. “We’ve all decided we won’t be eating any of our pizza sauce anytime soon,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

While most retailers struggled mightily to clear away debris, restock merchandise and deal with contractors hired to fix the lights and replace windows, Anne Cohen, manager of the D. Laurenti men’s store, occupied herself with more mundane matters, like writing signs for the store’s weekend “EARTHQUAKE SALE!”

The native of Brighton, England, cleaned her store, put the shirts back on the racks and hand-rolled dozens of bright floral ties and wedged them back in display cases. The store, located on the ground floor, suffered very little serious damage save for merchandise that toppled over.

Last Thursday, Cohen was ready for customers and waited patiently for the weekend. “I’m a very organized person. We’re trying to make the store look like nothing happened,” she said.

Indeed, D. Laurenti stood out like an island of organization in a sea of confusion, dust, buzzing saws and the smell of freshly cut wood.

On the second floor, a crew of young women walked around Victoria’s Secret, picking up hundreds of bottles of shower gel and lotion and other merchandise that littered the floor of the lingerie shop. The manager methodically inventoried every item that was picked up.

Not so lucky was the owner of Lolita’s, a crystalware shop that opened about a month ago. Although the store had been cleaned by Thursday, mall employees said it looked like it had been ransacked by a raging bull. Shards of fine crystal were swept up along with jagged pieces of glass from the store’s broken windows and display cases.

“There was glass everywhere. It was so sad to see the owner’s face,” said Victoria Hagopian, manager of the Mondi women’s apparel shop next door.

Except for broken windows, Hagopian’s store was ready for business last Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, Hagopian had already restocked the shelves, put the clothes back on hangers and swept up debris.

Her most pressing problem was figuring out a faster way to get to work from her Santa Clarita home. With the closure of the Antelope Valley and Golden State freeways, her 45-minute commute had turned into a three-hour nightmare.

On the first floor, Yvette Valencia, manager of the Joan Vass store, and employee Jasan Klepp were busy putting clothes back on racks and getting the store ready for the Saturday reopening.

“Come on in,” Klepp said to a visitor who walked through an opening where a window should be. “We may get our windows back by tomorrow, depending on how fast this guy can work,” she added, nodding toward a worker who was measuring for windows.

Like other store employees throughout the mall, Klepp was drawing a salary while the mall remained closed. “Our company is paying us, even though the store has been closed. That has eased the stress brought on by the earthquake a little bit,” said Klepp, a resident of Calabasas.

The cleanup at the Nature Co. store, a gift shop with an environmental theme, on the first floor was speeded along with the help of employees brought down from the company’s Santa Barbara store and with the unexpected help of Gordon Maybury, the company’s vice president in charge of retail, and other officers from the corporate office in Berkeley.

“Maybury had just landed in New York when he heard about the quake and turned right around and flew out here,” said store manager Judi Morales, who commutes from Costa Mesa. “Our corporate people got it together very quickly. We couldn’t have completed the cleanup this fast without their help.”