CHATSWORTH : Business Leaders Confident They Will Recover

Damage from the Jan. 17 earthquake was extensive but not crippling to Chatsworth, according to local business leaders.

Shaken especially hard were the neighborhoods along Devonshire and Lassen streets near De Soto, Owensmouth and Canoga avenues.

Damage to local business “was a matter initially of great despair to many people, myself included,” said A. W. Moss, secretary of the Chatsworth Chamber of Commerce.

But as local business joined together to help each other, and owners got a closer look at the damage, the picture brightened, he added.

“I don’t see anything in Chatsworth that is not repairable in three months or so,” said Dick Pearson, owner of a commercial leasing firm that manages over a dozen buildings in Chatsworth.

The earthquake damaged several large industrial complexes, including the headquarters of Packard Bell and Great Western Bank. Packard Bell has moved many of its operations to Newbury Park, but Great Western, after grounding most employees initially, had called 90% of them back to work by Tuesday.

The Ralph’s grocery store at Mason Avenue and Devonshire Street is temporarily closed. Telltale red no-entry tags are also posted on several small mini-malls in the neighborhood, the Trac Tech and Devon Industries buildings on De Soto, and some smaller, free-standing businesses such as the Kragen Auto Works on Devonshire Street.

Parishioners at the Catholic St. John Eudes Church have been attending services in a meeting hall because the church sanctuary was damaged, and the public library and historical museum are closed because of massive disarray.

In addition, five mobile home parks in Chatsworth were hard hit by the earthquake, said Sandy Clydesdale, field deputy for City Councilman Hal Bernson.

Mobile home parks throughout the 12th Council District “feel like forgotten cities,” Clydesdale said, noting that several are still without utilities.

Although many apartment complexes were damaged by the quake, one apartment manager said it was loss of jobs due to the earthquake, not fears about building safety, that are driving some tenants out of the area.

Pearson said that kind of ripple effect may be the most telling reverberation of the quake in the long term.

The quake “is not in itself a fatal blow,” he said. “But it is another sort of negative factor in the already weak economy . . . a number of companies were on the fence and this will push them out.”