Quake Weary Seek Out Ventura County Malls, Apartments : Commerce: Businesses find an influx of new customers. ‘It’s nice to see . . . normal things going on,’ one shopper says.
When Julie Gassert could no longer face the boarded-up storefronts and cracked walls of her favorite San Fernando Valley malls, she headed west this week for a more therapeutic shopping experience in Ventura County.
“It feels like a ghost town over there,” said the Reseda resident, shivering as she rested on a bench at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks. “Here, it feels like another world. It’s nice to see normal operations and normal things going on.”
From Oxnard hardware stores supplying lumber to Simi Valley disaster victims to Thousand Oaks businesses besieged by Valley residents, the commercial sector--at least in those parts of Ventura County that escaped major damage from the earthquake--has benefited dramatically.
“This is quite a boon,” said Steve Rubenstein, president of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce in Thousand Oaks. “We’re very pleased to help our neighbors to the south.”
The change is particularly noticeable in the commercial rental market, where brokers say hardly a large industrial building remains vacant east of Oxnard. In two weeks, businesses looking for temporary or permanent working space gobbled up about 500,000 square feet of rental space, said Rick Heath, a broker with Grubb & Ellis in Oxnard.
“The big companies needed to act within a week of the earthquake or they lost out,” he said.
Among the many companies that moved westward from the Valley are Vivitar, the camera manufacturer, which moved its corporate headquarters this month from Chatsworth to Newbury Park, and computer giant Packard Bell, also formerly of Chatsworth, relocating temporarily in Westlake Village and Camarillo.
Between all the new workers trying out local businesses on their lunch breaks and Valley residents seeking a haven from persistent aftershocks, business is flourishing, merchants say.
“It’s been really hectic,” said Gary Endicott, manager of the Thousand Oaks’ Sears store, which has handled much of the overflow from the closed Sears stores in Northridge and Canoga Park.
Local hardware and glass stores say they are swamped with customers since the quake jump-started the ailing construction business.
“Every morning when I drive down the 101 to Oxnard from Thousand Oaks, I’m seeing hundreds of glass-carrying trucks heading toward the Valley from as far away as Santa Barbara and Goleta,” said Dave Gulbranson, owner of Oxnard-based Oakstone Glass Corp.
“It’s a good time to be in the glass business,” he said.
At The Oaks, shoppers from the Valley, such as Winona Roark of West Hills, fill the mall’s boutiques and department stores.
“I’m not expecting a 5.0 aftershock here like I am out there,” Roark, 74, said as she searched for an athletics store where she could buy walking shoes.
Roark said she had considered going to one of the malls near her in the West Valley, but hopped on the Ventura Freeway when she could not figure out which stores were open.
“We knew some were open, but we didn’t know which ones,” she said. “We knew they were all open here.”
Jane Iovine, another customer at The Oaks, said the earthquake had made a Thousand Oaks convert out of her and her husband. The couple moved to Agoura four years ago after living for years in Granada Hills.
Whenever they needed a mall, they headed to Topanga Plaza or the now-devastated Northridge Fashion Center. When they wanted to go out to dinner, they drove east again, to Calabasas and Woodland Hills. Then the earthquake hit.
“The Valley is home, but right now, it doesn’t seem like home,” said Iovine, 55. “It gives me the feeling that a war’s been through there, and I wanted to get out.”
In the last two weeks, the Iovines tried at least three new restaurants in Thousand Oaks and made extensive shopping trips to The Oaks. They have found that they like the Conejo Valley.
“It’s less crowded out here--just delightful,” she said. “We’re saying, ‘Why didn’t we do more of this before?’ ”
The Iovines are not the only ones with that thought. The residential rental market in undamaged parts of eastern Ventura County and Camarillo has skyrocketed since the Jan. 17 temblor, with residents of hard-struck neighborhoods in the San Fernando and Simi valleys looking for a temporary roof over their heads while their homes are rebuilt.
“We’re filling up fast,” said Barbara Beck, operations manager at Hacienda de Camarillo Apartments, where about 40 units have been rented since the earthquake. “We’ve been renting to everybody from Northridge all the way to Simi Valley, and we’re still having people come in today.”
