Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Small-Town Americana Is Dealt a Crippling Blow : Fillmore: Merchants say the cost of starting over in the quake-damaged downtown may be too great.

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

Together they’ve preserved a slice of small-town Americana so pleasant 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.

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 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.

Officials of this small oil-and-farm town say the city--destroyed by fire in 1903, swamped by flood in 1928, rocked by at least three strong quakes this century--has the pluck to bounce back. But for now 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?’ ”

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 $200,000 to $300,000 to rebuild.

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

Many 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.

“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 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 drugstore and that the all-male Fillmore Club is reputed to have met for cards and meals at a second-story Central Avenue walk-up the second Monday of every month since World War I.

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.

But the losses they face tear at the heart and soul of the town.

Locals call the 77-year-old Fillmore Theater, at the precise center of the town’s central business district, “The Show.” 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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 same fate could befall Ben Aparicio, 44, whose building also abuts the movie house. 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.

“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.