We’re Open : Merchants Who Didn’t Quit or Move Are Back in Business, but Many Struggle
Three months after the Northridge earthquake shattered their lives, merchants along one hard-hit block of Reseda Boulevard are getting back to business. As for getting back to normal--well, that’s another story.
Consider Jackie Jones, owner of Jones Coffee Co. When she first laid eyes on her quake-devastated boutique--a half-block north of the Northridge Meadows Apartments, where 16 people died in the quake--the only item left intact among the spilled coffee beans and shattered Victorian collectibles was a solitary plate. After 15 years, Jones thought she would never open her doors again.
Yet open she did. Jones called vendors to replace her $50,000 in lost merchandise. She worked out deals to defer payments. She tapped her savings while waiting for word on her Small Business Administration loan application. Like many shopkeepers in the area who are still limping along in the aftermath of the earthquake, Jones shows a spirited determination to survive.
But in the seven weeks since she reopened, Jones sees only half as many customers as before the quake, and she’s selling more tacky wax--used to glue objects to hard surfaces--and earthquake-proof plate hangers than expensive china.
“We’re a breakable business,” she sighed. “It’s going to take a while for people to buy breakables again.”
Along this Northridge block, a mile from the epicenter, proprietors of small restaurants, dry cleaners, nail salons and boutiques in three strip malls recount a litany of frustrations and fears that haven’t abated. Their sales are down anywhere from 10% to 80% since the quake, mostly because they lost customers from the condemned apartments that line surrounding streets, and local homeowners are preoccupied with fixing their houses. Many businesses have cut prices and boosted advertising, but some longtime customers avoid the area altogether because quake damage and sightseers have clogged thoroughfares and altered traffic patterns.
Calling It Quits
Some business owners have called it quits. In the once-thriving Northridge Garden Center, where Jones has her shop, half the spaces are vacant. The former owner of the mini-mall also walked away last month, signing the deed over to the lender, who is only now starting to repair cracked walls, damaged floors and ceilings.
For many merchants who remain, it’s a day-to-day existence.
Roya Saberzadeh, owner of Rochie’s Greek Row, in another strip mall down the street from Northridge Garden Center, said her sales are only 50% of the pre-quake level, mostly because of continuing turmoil at Cal State Northridge nearby. Her clothing and memorabilia shop caters to CSUN sororities and fraternities, but school enrollment is down and many campus facilities remain closed. Students who do come in buy more off-the-shelf items, which are less profitable than the custom lettering on sweaters and sweat shirts that are Rochie’s specialty.
With a $4,000 to $5,000 monthly overhead, Saberzadeh said she’s losing money and wonders how she’ll replace thousands of dollars worth of wrecked equipment. She bargained for a 15% rent reduction, but agreed to a new three-year lease in return, and is disputing rent payments her landlord says she owes from just after the quake. She’d like to get a Small Business Administration loan and start a mail-order catalogue to lessen her dependence on CSUN. But Saberzadeh’s loan application hasn’t been filed yet, because she must pay $1,200 to an accountant to re-create necessary tax documents that were lost in a fire that destroyed her family’s Chatsworth house a year ago.
Before the earthquake, her family’s house was being rebuilt, but it now has $50,000 in earthquake damage. Saberzadeh was told at a Federal Emergency Management Administration center that the family can’t get a grant because they weren’t living in the house during the quake. Meanwhile, Saberzadeh, her father and brother pay a $2,300 monthly mortgage on the house plus $800 rent for two rooms where they now live.
Saberzadeh said she has borrowed money from her father and friends to keep her business going. Without an SBA loan and a pickup in sales, she said, she can’t hold out that much longer.
“It’s a nightmare,” Saberzadeh said. “Every morning before I open my shop, I’m someplace. I’m in this line, that line, at this interview, that interview. I’m being gobbled up by paperwork.”
Still, a gritty optimism pervades the business community here.
“I’m going to stick around,” declared Royal Cleaners owner Ara Boyajian, even though his sales are down 30% to 40%. He said 1994 “is a hang-in-there year, and I’m not a quitter.”
Quake Boom
Indeed, some merchants reported a temporary jump in sales following the earthquake, which they attribute to the damage-seeking sightseers who made the Northridge Meadows apartment complex a tourist stop. For weeks, tour buses with foreign visitors would stop there. At the Cameramart International photo supply shop, in a mini-mall next door to Northridge Meadows, owner Nubar Costantian hung a yellow banner across his awning to announce his reopening, and figured he gained some new customers among the sightseers.
But the tourist crowds have abated and, for many, business has slowed again. Northridge Meadows is slated for demolition May 2, and shopkeepers now worry that the tear-down process--expected to take longer than usual because evidence in the rubble will be gathered for lawsuits--will prevent customers from getting to them.
Without the steady foot traffic from local apartment dwellers that they once relied on, some shop owners are devising new ways to drum up sales. The Kids at Heart gift shop and Coco’s Family Restaurant, both in Northridge Garden Center, offered discounted food and merchandise last Saturday to customers wearing pajamas. Kids at Heart owner Laura D’Angelo spent $500 advertising the promotion, but with sales at the shop off 30% since the quake, she said, “You can’t just have a sale, you have to have an event.”
At the Truly Yours Restaurant & Bar, general manager John Beauchamp said he’s been selling two-for-one discount meal cards to area residents, which has been a boon for business and helped pack the cafe at lunchtime one afternoon last week. But Beauchamp said sales are still down 10% to 20%.
Down the street, Scott Caruthers, co-owner of the Exotic Fitness exercise salon, has begun advertising in phone books outside the area, distributing flyers and selling personal training sessions for just $35 a week--barely enough to cover his expenses but enough to get his normal volume of customers in the door. Business at the tanning salon he co-owns next door has been nonexistent, he said, because former customers are afraid of tanning beds collapsing in an earthquake. So Caruthers is considering offering martial arts lessons. “We’re in an adaptive phase,” he said.
Others said they’re tightening their belts as never before. At Kimary’s Nail Boutique, across the street from Exotic Fitness, where business is down nearly 15%, owner Kim Dellibovi got a $10,000 bank loan to get back in operation. But she cut out such extras as hanging silk plants, premium hand soap, ceramic decor and free cookies, and replaced her “super-duper” phone with a basic model. Many customers, who had been busy repairing their houses, have been trickling back in. “Their nails were a mess,” Dellibovi said, happily adding that those customers had to shell out for new sets of acrylic nails.
But there are those who find their hope running thin. Harry Paissides, co-owner of Reseda Hye Market, in the strip mall next to Northridge Meadows, said 80% of his business has disappeared as the ethnic population that frequented his specialty grocery and deli were forced from damaged apartments. Next door, Sujatha Balasubramanian, owner of Paru’s Indian restaurant, and across the street, Gianni Fontana di Trevi, who owns a dry cleaning and tailor shop, said they used to rely on referrals and employees from Northridge Fashion Center. With that mall basically closed for the next several months, they wonder how long they can hang on.
Landlords also complain of trying times the past three months. Bill Matthews, who manages two strip centers on this block of Reseda Boulevard that his family owns, has completed repairs there and has been negotiating with tenants over rent credits and reductions. He said he has had to explain to SBA workers what a lease is, and is trying to restructure his debt with a mortgage banker whose attitude is, “If you can’t enforce contracts with tenants, we will.”
Former Northridge Garden Center owner Beth Burnam one month ago signed that strip mall over to the lender, Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn., after failing to agree on loan terms.
Phoenix replaced boarded-up windows with glass, but has only now begun to fix the damaged walls, ceilings and floors. Phoenix spokesman Tom Gariepy said tenants won’t pay rent while structural repairs are under way, and expects it will be six months before the final cosmetic work is done.
Some shopkeepers decided not to wait, and instead relocated.
Helmut Behensky, owner of Bea’s Swim & Sport, pictured an aftershock hitting and worried about what would happen when customers were there trying on swimsuits. So he reopened his shop in Thousand Oaks, but said he would consider going back to Northridge when his six-month lease expires.
Sew Fine, a sewing supplies shop, moved to Tarzana because owner Roseann Salvinger feared working in a damaged building.
But others, like Jackie Jones of Jones Coffee Co., plan to stick it out. By the entrance, Jones hung the plate that outlasted the quake as a symbol of endurance and a reminder, she said, that “I’m supposed to be here.”
