EARTHQUAKE: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Businesses on Shaken Block Fight to Survive

From the door of her small shop on Reseda Boulevard, Roya Saberzadeh surveyed the scene outside. Along the block, one apartment building after another was condemned, including the Northridge Meadows complex just across the street, where 16 people died in the Jan. 17 earthquake.

The National Guard troops that had patrolled the area in the first days after the temblor were gone. The crowds of sightseers that had for weeks packed this hard-hit street about a mile from the earthquake’s epicenter were dying down. And Saberzadeh was left to ponder her future.

At her shop, Rochie’s Greek Row, which sells clothes and memorabilia with insignias from college fraternities and sororities, Saberzadeh has cleaned up broken glass, replaced merchandise on shelves and repaired ceiling tiles. She reopened two weeks after the earthquake with only one of four sewing machines operating, a damaged heat-sealing machine and broken wood-cutting devices. With no earthquake insurance and $50,000 in damages, she wonders how she’ll pay her $2,000 rent.

Saberzadeh waited for hours at Federal Emergency Management Agency centers, and is now hoping for a low-interest emergency loan from the Small Business Administration. But she was discouraged when the SBA told her she needs extensive records, including tax filings and profit and loss statements, after which loan approval could take two months.

Even with a loan, Saberzadeh said her business would still be on shaky ground. Most small business owners, she said, barely pay the bills. “Where am I going to get the other $600 or $700 a month to pay for the loan? The economy is already bad enough, and my savings are depleted.”

And so it goes for the dozens of merchants in this rattled block of three strip malls, full of delicatessens, nail salons and dry cleaners near the wrecked Northridge Meadows apartments. These small businesses, and two mall landlords, continue to grapple with the recovery from the earthquake--giving rise to some frayed nerves and tensions. Looking to the future, they face the prospect that the apartment dwellers and Cal State Northridge students who once frequented their establishments may have left the area.

Nearly a month after the 6.8 magnitude earthquake, many window panes along the street are still boarded up and some stores remain dark. Saberzadeh’s brother, Ramin Bezadi, who has two shops in the same mall as his sister, has seen only a few customers return to his fitness salon, and none to his tanning salon.

Even before the earthquake, most of these merchants survived day-to-day. For many, that was enough to hold onto their dreams, to have a little something of their own. They worked long hours, taking in a few hundred to a few thousand dollars in sales each day. Most carry no earthquake insurance because of the high premiums and deductibles. And now all are waiting and hoping that, once walls and ceilings are patched and windows restored, customers will come.

At least one merchant has already called it quits.

Lori Pass opened the Ten Little Piggies children’s shoe store 2 1/2 years ago in the Northridge Garden Center strip mall, a few doors north of the Northridge Meadows apartments. It has been slow going because of the recession, Pass said, and now the time she would have to stay closed while her shop is repaired would mean the loss of income needed to buy her spring shoes.

“When you’re just hanging on, to come up with more money to pay your bills . . . it’s just not worth it,” Pass said.

So she is holding a fire sale in the garage of her Northridge home, selling $40 brand-name sneakers for $20. Her store manager, who lived in a now-condemned apartment building, is packing up and moving to Colorado. Two weeks ago a shopkeeper from Glendora stopped by and bought some of her wall hooks and displays. “It hurt,” Pass said. “It just hurt.”

Hairo and Pierre Hairbetian, father and son owners of Andre’s Shoe Repair, next to Rochie’s Greek Row, said business has been practically nonexistent since the earthquake. After 11 years, they will have to cut prices and spend more money on advertising to bring customers back--money they don’t have. “Mentally, we’re destroyed,” Pierre said.

A few doors down, Gianni Fontana di Trevi looked glum as he flipped through receipts at his dry-cleaning and tailor shop. In the past few years, though business was slow, he paid the bills with his usual $200 in daily sales. But more than two weeks after the earthquake, his sales had fallen to $108 one day, $53 the next.

The meager business Fontana di Trevi gets now is mostly to clean clothes soiled during the earthquake. “But for how long?” he asked.

“Before, we were happy we were alive. Now I worry about the business. This is my life.”

In the strip mall across the street, Ben Hur reopened his Zeppelin Cleaners last Tuesday, having fixed his ceiling and equipment. The next three months, he believes, will determine whether he can remain in business. Until then, Hur said, he’ll open his doors each day and turn on the noisy dry-cleaning machines. “After more than three weeks that they were off, it’s a good sound--like music.”

The tenants in these mini-malls aren’t the only ones suffering. The landlords have their own demons to deal with.

Beth Burnam, whose family owns the Northridge Garden Center, has spent the past month phoning contractors, meeting with structural engineers, talking to tenants and renegotiating her mortgage loan.

About half the shops in Burnam’s strip mall have reopened, but some remain yellow-tagged for “limited entry” by the Building and Safety Department. Some ceiling tiles need replacing, and cracks in doors, walls and floors must be patched. Two weeks ago, on plywood put up on a store window in Burnam’s mall, this message was spray-painted in red: “We Lost Everything. We Will Miss You.” That depressing sign has since come down. For Burnam, even finding an “Open For Business” banner proved problematic as local suppliers were sold out.

Burnam feels caught between her tenants, who can’t afford to pay rent, and her mortgage lender. She estimated it will cost $250,000 for all the repairs, and she doesn’t have earthquake insurance. “I truly have no money to run the center,” she said. “My bills right now exceed the money in my checking account.”

Trying to sell the strip mall would be tough because of the depressed real estate market. Allowing the lender to foreclose is an option, Burnam said--but hardly an attractive one.

The other strip mall landlord nearby, William Matthews, shares similar woes. Matthews’ family owns the two facing strip malls on Reseda Boulevard, where Rochie’s Greek Row and Zeppelin Cleaners are situated, and runs the malls’ management company, Mat West Co. in Van Nuys.

The seven commercial and industrial properties owned by the Matthews family trust in the Northridge area are all damaged, and with no earthquake insurance the repairs could total $750,000, Matthews estimated. At the two Reseda Boulevard strip malls, many of the T-bars in the ceilings crumpled, toilets blew off their bolts, a concrete sheer wall toppled and the roofs ruptured in places. Every aftershock worsened the damage; a few units remain yellow-tagged.

Matthews has pulled workers from his Upland office to help with the cleanup and repairs, but, he said, “I’ve only got so many crews, so much time.”

Some shop owners have asked for relief from paying rent, which both Matthews and Burnam said they’ll consider on a case-by-case basis. As frustrations mount, tensions between the property owners and some tenants have surfaced. Matthews said a couple of unhappy tenants locked his workers out of their stores, blocking the repair of broken pipes that flooded other shops with water.

At Northridge Garden Center, Bea’s Swim & Sport owner Helmut Behensky complained that loose roof tiles were in danger of falling. He contended that Burnam, the landlord, and some other tenants were rushing to reopen shops before enough repairs were made.

Burnam countered that maintenance workers have been removing roof tiles that might pose a danger, as instructed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. “There are tenants who don’t want the center to reopen” because of the slow economy, she said. “They’d rather get out of their lease.”

Still, all is not bleak along this earthquake-torn block.

Laura D’Angelo, owner of the Kids at Heart gift shop in Northridge Garden Plaza, has reopened and resumed hosting children’s birthday parties and crafts demonstrations. On her boarded-up windows she painted in pink and red, “Open For Fun,” and hopes to pick up some business now that the badly damaged Northridge Fashion Center shopping mall a mile away won’t reopen until July.

One of D’Angelo’s new products, a rubber stamp that says “We Survived the Northridge Quake,” sold out quickly and she has reordered more.

“Some days,” D’Angelo said, “I think I can make it through.”

Down the street, Howard and Elise Kuebler reopened their sandwich shop, My Hero, within a week after the earthquake, in time for their 30th anniversary in business. The Kueblers feel luckier than most, since their savings will cover the $20,000 in damages at the shop. Lunchtime crowds have been brisk since reopening. Longtime customers come, Howard said, “hell or high water.”

And at Rochie’s Greek Row, Roya Saberzadeh vowed she would survive.