Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Shattered Americana : Damage in Quaint Downtown Fillmore May Be Too Great to Overcome

They have been the backbone of Fillmore for decades. Passing their shops from father to son, they have kept main street alive.

Together they have preserved a slice of small-town Americana so pleasant that movie crews flock there to recapture an era lost to tract homes and shopping malls.

But now, with their grit tested to the limit, some business owners on downtown Fillmore’s Central Avenue say they don’t know if they can ever recoup what they lost two weeks ago in the most devastating earthquake in Ventura County history.

Officials of this small oil-and-farm town say the city has the pluck to bounce back from $250 million in damage. But Fillmore is a town in mourning.

“It’s like losing family,” said gun shop owner Gary Creagle. “People are already coming up to me and saying, ‘We miss downtown. What are we going to do without downtown.’ ”

The shock of the Jan. 17 quake is wearing off, and merchants are facing a reality harsher than they thought possible just two weeks ago.

“People are discouraged,” said Creagle, a former mayor. “Reality is setting in.”

Buffeted day-to-day by engineering reports that are ever gloomier, shopkeepers who spoke confidently of reconstruction a week ago, are now wondering if they can afford to rebuild at a cost of $200,000 to $300,000.

Before the quake, Central Avenue was a bustling main street. Shoppers often had to drive the block five times to find a parking spot. But profits were never large. And many building owners say adding new reconstruction loans on top of old mortgages does not make economic sense.

Owners of half a dozen buildings with 14 shops--nearly all built of brick and mortar between 1910 and 1925--say they will tear down their structures and not rebuild. They say they are too old to start from scratch.

About half of Central Avenue’s 55 merchants say they don’t know where they will end up in the months to come. Nearly half of their shops are red-tagged as being too dangerous to enter. Most of the rest are marked unsafe. A high mesh-wire fence keeps the public away. Visitors wear hard hats to survey the damage.

“People are finding out it’s too expensive to rebuild. So it’s like, ‘Mark us red. We’re outta here,’ ” said Janet Foy, whose flower shop has little damage, but whose neighbors are increasingly distraught. “We’ve heard a few more negative things. Today has been a bad day.”

But even as merchants mourned their losses and pondered reconstructions that do not pencil out, they said they love their small town and don’t want to go anywhere else.

They like the fact that they graduated from the same high school as their grandfathers, that their moms jerked sodas at Clough’s drug store and that the all-male Fillmore Club is reputed to have met for cards and meals at a second-story Central Avenue walk-up every second Monday of every month since World War I.

And some merchants said they are certain Fillmore--destroyed by fire in 1903, swamped by flood in 1928, rocked by at least three strong earthquakes this century--will ride out its latest catastrophe.

“We had the flood, and we had a real depression. We had rationing and price controls. So we’ll stay in business,” said Harvey Patterson, 74, who began to work in his father’s Central Avenue hardware store at the age of 10. His own daughter plans to one day take over the family business.

Indeed, as search-and-rescue crews entered cracked buildings to retrieve valuables last week, some merchants showed a resiliency that they say will bring Fillmore through its current trial.

Foy is selling flowers and Patterson is peddling hardware out of their stores’ back doors. Double Deal is handing out pizzas in its alleyway. Grocer Jesse Segovia moved into a storefront across the street from his battered 83-year-old market and struggles on.

Ben Aparicio moved his tax business back into his house, and Darrell Garner relocated his plumbing store to a different shop away from downtown. Other merchants retrieved their goods and pondered a city offer to set up storefronts out of trailers or tents in a park next to Central Avenue.

‘The Show’

Locals call the 77-year-old Fillmore Theater, at the precise center of the town’s central business district, “The Show.” Its bright, new red-and-white marquee still announces “Beethoven’s 2nd,” the last picture before the Jan. 17 quake.

As the only movie theater along the 50 miles between Ventura and Santa Clarita, it lured customers from miles around. But now a key wall has collapsed. Demolition is expected. And many residents say they regret the theater’s passing.

“That’s one of the things that hurts me more than anything else,” Fire Chief Pat Askren said. “A lot of little towns don’t have their own theater. I’m going to miss it if it doesn’t come back.”

The Show is important to a town like Fillmore because it had continued to draw not only teen-agers but old-timers who had once paid 20 cents to see its first talking pictures.

“I was there when the first sound movie came to town,” Patterson recalled. “It was ‘Hells Angels,’ and in the very first scene there was a plane diving at us with its machine gun going. Every kid hit the floor.”

The theater still brings the young to town after dark and customers to the street.

“People around here aren’t real wealthy, and it’s a nice source of fun. I don’t know where we’d go otherwise,” said Gabe Asenas, proprietor of the Fillmore Billiard Parlor, a teen-age hangout a few doors away.

But the owner of the Fillmore Theater building, Dale Larson, is 76 years old and not in a position to think about starting over. “Right now I’m just planning on demolishing the building and having the plot for sale.”

Hal Graves has run The Show since 1983. At age 52, he said he’s young enough to build a new theater if he can just get a low-interest disaster loan from the federal government.

“My life interest is movie theaters,” Graves said. “So I’m sure going to try.”

Already residents are talking about a “Save The Show” campaign on cable TV. And city officials, who spent $13,000 on the theater’s new marquee when they spruced up the downtown a few years ago, want to salvage it and store it at City Hall.

“That’s just in case there is ever a theater here again,” Graves said.

And in a development late Friday, hope emerged that The Show might avoid demolition after all.

City Manager Roy Payne said state preservationists insist the theater is not beyond repair and have presented calculations that suggest reconstruction might be feasible.

Domino Effect Feared

What finally happens to the Fillmore Theater and other badly damaged Central Avenue businesses may depend on disaster aid. U.S. Small Business Administration representatives are in town doling out application forms, but no loans so far.

“Everybody’s getting more confused and frustrated as we go along,” said Ron Stewart, 44, whose grandfather started Ballard Furniture 57 years ago. Stewart bought the building from his mother four years ago. His sister’s manicure shop is one of his three tenants.

Stewart figures it would cost him perhaps $250,000 to rebuild, “so financially I would be better off to just tear it down and start over,” he said. Of course, he said, he couldn’t afford the mortgage on the reconstruction loan.

“It just sounds like a lot of us are going to be out a lot of money, or just out, period,” he said. “I’d like to carry on. What else am I going to do? My life’s work has been in this business.”

Weighing heavily on Stewart, and on store owners close to the Fillmore Theater, however, is the question of what will happen to their businesses if the theater comes down.

Many of the Central Avenue stores have common walls, as was the practice 80 years ago. The strength of one store relies on its next-door neighbor, as have the merchants themselves.

But when one building falls, the others are threatened in a domino effect, several merchants said. Garner’s plumbing and hardware stores share a wall with Stewart’s building. And Garner shares a wall with The Show.

“The theater has dominoed me,” Garner said. “I’m yellow tagged now. They’re letting me get all my stuff out of my store before they tag it red.”

The fear runs in both directions from the Fillmore Theater.

Aparicio, 44, whose building also abuts the movie house, said he’s concerned.

“If they demolish that, then there’s a high probability my building might also have to go,” he said. “I haven’t received a notice of demolition. But a few (city) engineers told me they’re considering that.”

After building a tax preparation business to 3,000 clients, Aparicio said he and a relative bought his 1918 storefront four years ago for $250,000. They invested another $50,000 in improvements last year.

Then the earth shook furiously in Fillmore, wiping out a lifetime of effort in mere seconds. Aparicio said he hopes to rebuild and save a building that has helped establish Fillmore’s character.

“We all chose Fillmore because of the uniqueness of its architecture and its small-town feel,” he said. “But if any improvement through demolition or repair will bring this building up to code, then I’m for it. It needs to be done.”

Tenants along Central Avenue tend to agree. They realize what could have happened if the 6.6-magnitude earthquake had occurred at 9:30 a.m. rather than five hours earlier.

“I won’t go back into those old buildings,” chiropractor David Erickson said. “I’d rather work in an ugly building and be safe.”

But as Fillmore city officials moved quickly last week to demolish old, unsound buildings and rebuild from there, state and federal authorities intervened.

On Tuesday, the city announced that it would tear down 14 buildings, including five Central Avenue structures that contain 13 different businesses. Included were the Central Market, the Fillmore Theater, the Fillmore health clinic, the landmark Masonic Building and a small structure next to it.

On Friday, the state Office of Historic Preservation refused to allow any buildings to be razed, saying that its own inspections indicate that every Central Avenue structure can be saved.

Distinctiveness Lost

But building owners say they don’t have the money for costly reconstruction. And state representatives acknowledge that ultimately they cannot stop demolitions.

“I think it’s going to be really changed when those buildings come down,” said Santa Paula architectural historian Judith Triem, who recommended against demolition. “What was so good was that it was so cohesive. And when you take those buildings out, you have holes. And it’s never really the same again.”

Part of Fillmore’s distinctiveness will be lost, she said.

“This whole valley--Fillmore, Piru and Santa Paula--is like a step back in time,” she said. “It’s like a time warp, really. It reflects a sort of frozen-in-time place that doesn’t go much past the 1930s.”

City officials say they must move forward by replacing unsound buildings with new ones designed to withstand quakes. And they note that a new city architectural policy requires all new downtown construction to generally match the brick-and-awning style of existing buildings.

“We want to keep it like it is, good old Fillmore,” Segovia said. He plans to repair his 1911 corner market, which greets visitors as they enter the one-block downtown core.

Segovia is one of several longtime owners whose structures are severely damaged but who said they never considered tearing down a historical building that could be repaired.

Robert C. Harmonson and his wife, Laura, said they expect to quickly repair the two buildings their separate families have owned since 1906 and 1929.

Several shops are already open and inspectors downgraded the danger of several others on Friday. Still, city officials say it could be 18 months before Central Avenue is fully recovered. And some merchants think that estimate is optimistic.

“I think it will be back to normal, but it will not be done for three or four years,” Robert Harmonson said. “Hopefully, in my lifetime I’ll see it back the way it was a month ago.”

Fillmore Damage

Historic Downtown Suffers Following Quake

No city in Ventura County was more devastated by the Jan. 17 earthquake than Fillmore, a town of 13,000 residents founded in 1888 on a new railroad line from Saugus to Ventura. The worst of the city’s estimated $250 million in damage was on Central Avenue, the heart of the downtown business district. Most shops--built of unreinforced brick and mortar between 1900 and 1925--suffered severe damage. Twenty-five businesses have been red-tagged as dangerous, 17 are yellow-tagged for limited entry and 13 are safe to enter. Key buildings that may be demolished include the Masonic Building, Fillmore Theater, Central Market and the Fillmore health clinic.

The Businesses of Central Avenue

1 Power House Gym 2 Frank’s Auto Repair 3 Eli’s Discount Store 4 Fillmore Video 5 Country Jubilee 6 Fillmore Family Health Care Center 7 Central Market 8 Fillmore Club 9 Daniel’s Boutique/Nic-Nac Discount Store/Hair Affair 10 Cortez Fashion 11 Fillmore Studio 12 Topping’s Shoes 13 Vacant 14 Post Office 15 Double Deal Pizza 16 Clough’s Prescription Drugs & Cosmetics 17 La Playita Seafood 18 Lourdes Fashion for Less 19 Fillmore Herald 20 Segovia’s Fillmore Market 21 Citizen’s State Bank 22 Fillmore Billiard Parlor 23 El Burro-Rosie’s Restaurant/Mike’s Service (Tax/Immigration/Travel) 24 Mirage Tanning Boutique 25 Up in Arms 26 Central Computer 27 Drew Ryee Law Office/B.A. Income Tax 28 David Erickson Central Chiropractor 29 Terri’s Beauty Salon 30 Fillmore Theater 31 Cielito Lindo Beauty Salon 32 Garner’s Fillmore Plumbing and Hardware 33 Chamber of Commerce/Dave Crocket Studio 34 Ballard Furniture/Nails & Things 35 The Hair Loft/Fillmore Flower Shop 36 Lupe’s Fashions 37 Patterson Hardware 38 Giant Truck Stop Headquarters 39 Masonic Building (incoudes Fillmore Gazette, Vic’s Shoe Service, Donna Tours, Linda’s Clip Joint, thrift shop) 40 The Card Dealer 41 Genesis Hair Design Beauty Salon 42 Fillmore Realty 43 Fillmore Mercantile *

Masonic Building.

Built in 1919, the three-story structure is a designated county landmark. City inspectors have marked it for demolition.

*

Fillmore Theater

Built in 1916, city inspectors have marked it for demolition.

*

Segovia’s Market

Built in 1911, it is severely damaged but owners hope to rebuild.

*

Source: Fillmore Building and Safety Dept. and Fillmore Historical Museum; Research by DARYL KELLEY / Los Angeles Times