SUNLAND-TUJUNGA : Landmark Restaurant Still Awaits Repairs

Since Jan. 17, Ben Caputo has been playing the waiting game.

The co-owner of the landmark Sterling’s Restaurant in Sunland gets asked almost every day whether he will reopen the business that has hosted hundreds of wedding receptions, civic club meetings and community events.

Each time the question is answered the same: He doesn’t know. He’s waiting--waiting for inspectors; waiting for insurance agents; waiting, waiting, waiting.

“Down the line, everybody suffers, everybody hurts,” Caputo said. “My main concern is with my employees.”

Many of his 21 employees, who now have to seek disaster assistance, have been with the restaurant longer than he has. Some have been there since 1965, when the restaurant, in Sunland since 1938, opened at its current location on Fenwick Avenue.

The earthquake that struck in the early morning of Jan. 17 spared much of Sunland-Tujunga, a hillside area above the San Fernando Valley in northeast Los Angeles. But the damage to Sterling’s--cracked ceilings and walls, kitchen equipment pulled out of the walls, damage to the floors--has already had a major ripple effect in the area.

“It’s really going to be hard for the community if they don’t reopen,” said Joan Slater, president of the Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce. Sterling’s Restaurant has been the major meeting place for many of the local community groups and functions for the area. Caputo said the restaurant also draws groups from Lake View Terrace, Sylmar, Burbank and elsewhere.

By one estimate, Caputo said it could cost as much as $350,000 to fix the building, but how to get it repaired is the problem. He has been forced to play a waiting game with contractors, insurance companies and government assistance agencies. He is often asked when he will reopen, and he has no answer.

“It’s been very frustrating, really,” said Caputo, who co-owns the restaurant with his partner, Al Jesenski. “My usual routine is getting down there at 7 or 7:30 in the morning and after a while say ‘Hell, I can’t do anything. I might as well leave.’ ”

Another damaged building important to the community is the gym at the Sunland Recreation Center, across the street from Sterling’s.

“We’ve either canceled some of our classes or transferred them to somewhere else,” said Greg Perkins, senior recreation director for the center. About 20 bricks were lost from the center’s gym wall, forcing the building to close the day after the earthquake.

Basketball, square dancing and country-Western programs have been relocated. The archery program is looking for a new site. The women’s volleyball program is hoping to relocate to the Stonehurst Recreation Center in Sun Valley after the Federal Emergency Management Agency moves out. But a free-play volleyball program and the archery program needs to find a new site.

The only program that has given refunds is ice skating, which uses a rink in North Hollywood damaged by the earthquake, Perkins said.

But, Slater said, “it looks like we were pretty fortunate up here. We didn’t have nearly the damage we had in the 1971 quake.”