Shopping Around for Stores Open for Business : Retail: Consumers find their options limited in the wake of the Northridge temblor. Many stores that are open are luring new customers.

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, according to bumper sticker lore. But given all the earthquake damage, where do Valley shoppers go?

Their choices are somewhat limited. In hard-hit Northridge, a Target, Mervyn’s and Kmart are closed. The battered Northridge Fashion Center won’t reopen for about six months, some of its department stores for more than a year. Also closed for about a month are the mall shops of Laurel Plaza in North Hollywood and the Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, where the top floor of a Bullock’s caved in. Three San Fernando Valley Sav-On stores are closed, along with their pharmacies.

So for many local residents, the hunt is on for places to shop. And for the retailers that have managed to reopen, there is the opportunity to win some new customers.

“Among the people out in Northridge, I don’t know that there’s a great amount of understanding where we are located,” said Allen Oblow, general manager of the Media City Center mall in Burbank.

So the shopping center is running newspaper and radio ads. It has banners hung outside announcing that it’s open. Many people have called to ask for directions, so Oblow plans to include a locater map in the next series of ads.

In the past several days, traffic at the mall has increased 15% to 20% for this time of the year, and last weekend its corridors were crowded. Customers literally bumped against each other in Bullock’s and at Ikea, a big home furnishings store.

“If it’s just a temporary thing and we can help people out, that’s great,” said Oblow. “If it becomes a permanent thing, that’s great too.”

Nicolette Abernathy, Glendale Galleria marketing director, the largest shopping center in the Valley area, is hoping for a similar pickup in business based on the number of calls the mall is receiving from people asking how to get there. The mall has a Nordstrom, Robinsons-May, JC Penney, Mervyn’s and 260 shops, all of which are open.

Other local shopping centers that are at least partially open include the Panorama Mall in Panorama City, where some stores have reported a huge jump in sales; the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where about half the shops reopened last weekend, and the Promenade mall in Woodland Hills, which boasts the only operating Bullock’s in the West Valley but is losing a Saks Fifth Avenue store that was damaged and will not reopen.

Some shops at Woodland Hills’ Topanga Plaza reopened on Friday. At Fallbrook Mall in Canoga Park, a Target and most of the smaller shops are back in business.

But many open malls have anchor department stores that are still off-limits. That could prove a benefit for those centers with operating anchor stores.

In the parking lot at Topanga Plaza mall in Woodland Hills on Friday--just a few hours after that mall partially reopened--a man shouted frantically to another driver, “Is Nordstrom open? Any of the department stores?” Told they were all closed, he asked, “What about the other mall?” as he gestured in the direction of the Promenade a block away. When told the Bullock’s there had reopened, he turned around and sped away.

Over at the Promenade Bullock’s, Bianca Wolter of Northridge shopped for her favorite brand of cosmetics. The Bullock’s she usually patronizes, in the Northridge Fashion Center, collapsed in the earthquake and has been condemned. Bullock’s says it wants to rebuild the Northridge store and is in discussions with the mall developer.

A table set up in front of the Promenade Bullock’s advertised “Earthquake and Bridal Registry.” Sales clerk Murray Rittner explained that customers can register for merchandise that their friends could buy to replace items lost in the earthquake, just as someone would register for wedding gifts.

At one of the temporary shops set up in the mall to sell Bullock’s housewares while the top floor of department store undergoes repairs, Marion and Frank Mendelson of Woodland Hills shopped for wine glasses to replace those broken in the quake. “I was serving wine in regular water glasses,” said Frank. “It was too much.”

Annette Bethers, marketing director at Topanga Plaza, said she expects business to pick up when Nordstrom and housewares chain Crate & Barrel reopen in a few weeks, because both stores tend to be shopping destinations in themselves. The nearest Nordstrom stores at the Glendale Galleria and the Westside Pavillion are both open; the closest Crate & Barrel in Century City is also open. “We definitely will feel an effect because those stores are down,” but when Nordstrom is up and running “we feel we’ll do well,” Bethers said.

Kristin Mueller, general manager at the Valencia Town Center in Santa Clarita, also expects business to gain steam. Because of severe traffic congestion due to a downed freeway interchange leading into Santa Clarita, many local residents who work in the San Fernando Valley might now shop at her mall instead of spending more time on the road going to shopping places in the Valley, she said.

The Valencia mall has a Robinsons-May, JC Penney and Sears, all of which are open. Traffic was brisk last weekend as customers shopped for housewares, tools, televisions and mattresses, Mueller said. Another lure: The mall has started selling Metrolink tickets and “the service has just boomed” since the earthquake, she said.

Among the busiest places in the Valley during the past several days have been stores carrying housewares and home-repair products.

The Target store in Woodland Hills, which reopened two days after the quake, has been 30% busier than normal, said manager Joyce Atkinson. The chain has made supplying its Target stores that are open in the area a top priority so items remain plentiful, she said. “People are thanking us for being open.”

At another Target store, in the Fallbrook Mall in Canoga Park--where Mervyn’s, Sears and the JC Penney Outlet store are closed--Doris Dennis of Winnetka piled flashlights, paper plates and rubber containers into her shopping cart on Friday. “I’m going to eat off paper plates till I’m sure of the water supply,” she said.

A few blocks away at Home Depot in Canoga Park, the parking lot was packed before noon Friday. Inside, shelves were well-stocked and customers shopped for everything from mirrors to pipes to cabinet latches.

Jim Forrester of Chatsworth loaded three bags of dry stucco mix in his cart to fix earthquake cracks in his house and driveway. “I’m not too anxious to get started because I don’t know if it’s over yet,” he said, referring to the frequent aftershocks.

Vivian Rennie of West Hills bought flashlights, batteries and gloves. “It’s like closing the door after the horses have gone out,” she laughed. But after groping around in the dark following the earthquake, she hopes to be prepared from now on. She even planned to buy fluorescent paint to make markers in her home that would be visible in the dark.

But Home Depot store manager Bob Barnett said he has begun to see a shift in demand for products since the first days after the quake. “At first it was flashlights and tarps and emergency items to get back into homes,” he said. “Now we’re seeing things that are not as critical, but that need replacing, like brackets to hold shelves in place.”

Stores that accept Red Cross and Salvation Army vouchers also reported big increases in business.

At a Kmart in North Hollywood, customer traffic has increased about 25% in recent days. Manager Mark Landis attributed the jump in part to the temporary closing of Kmarts in Northridge and San Fernando. But the vouchers are also generating so much business, he said, that three cash registers have been devoted just to voucher-paying customers.

The biggest-selling items have been the obvious earthquake related items, Landis said--bottled water, lanterns, flashlights and batteries. But he also recalled one customer who purchased a $500 necklace to cheer up his quake-rattled wife.

The Sav-On Drugs chain responded to the temporary closing of three earthquake-damaged stores in Sherman Oaks, Granada Hills and Woodland Hills by moving pharmacy files and automatically transferring phone calls to the nearest open Sav-Ons. Prescription drugs, bottled water and batteries have been the biggest-selling items, said a manager at the Studio City Sav-On, which is handling business from the closed Sherman Oaks store. “Cosmetic sales are also going up,” he said. “Why, I don’t know.”

A few frayed nerves began to surface at retail outlets Friday. At the Circuit City store in Woodland Hills, a customer argued loudly with a manager over prices on a television and videocassette recorder he wanted to replace those lost in the quake.

At Topanga Plaza, Sunshine Beauty Supply assistant manager Audrey Veith glared at a pile of shampoo and cosmetics that workers had thrown into big plastic bags prior to removing some asbestos that had been dislodged during the earthquake. “It’s really horrible,” she said, noting that cans of hair spray had exploded and other products were ruined. Veith did manage to restock shelves with hair coloring kits. “I knew the ladies would want their hair dye,” she said.

Indeed, for some customers, shopping was simply an opportunity to return to normal living.

Craig and Erin Johnson, who moved to Reseda from Texas seven months ago, visited Topanga Plaza on Friday to buy Dallas Cowboys T-shirts. Maclynn Larsen of La Crescenta and Marilyn Schuler of Ventura figured the mall would be a good place to meet for lunch.

And at WaldenBooks, a prominent display inspired by the earthquake, featuring home repair and traffic guides, produced not one sale, said assistant manager Joyce McDougald. “People are just buying what they normally buy.”