Extent of Damage Daunts Heart of Historic Fillmore

They have been the backbone of this town for decades. Passing their shops from father to son, they have kept their 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.

No city in Ventura County was more devastated by the Jan. 17 earthquake than Fillmore, a town of 13,000 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. Because their buildings were made of unreinforced masonry, merchants were unable to get earthquake insurance.

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 as unsafe. A high wire-mesh fence keeps the public away. Visitors wear hard hats when surveying 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 the second Monday of every month since World War I.

As 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 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,” said Harvey Patterson, 74. “It was ‘Hell’s 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 brought 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 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,” he said.

Late Friday, hope emerged that The Show might avoid demolition after all. City Manager Roy Payne said state preservationists insist that 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 handing 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.

When one building falls, the others are threatened in a domino effect, several merchants said. Darrell 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 his 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 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, pre-dawn earthquake had occurred during business hours.

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

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

On Friday, however, 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.

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.”

Several shops have reopened, 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.”

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