After the Quake, Business Still Shaky : Sales Off by Up to 80%, but Will to Survive Remains

The three months since the Northridge earthquake have sorely tested the resources, creativity and optimism of merchants along a hard-hit block of Reseda Boulevard.

They’ve dipped into savings and taken on debt to replace lost merchandise, haggled over leases and coped with a maze of bureaucratic demands. But each week has seen more and more shops open for business.

Sales are down 10% to 80%, and for many merchants, staying in business remains a day-to-day struggle. Still, a gritty determination to survive pervades the community.

Consider Jackie Jones, owner of Jones Coffee Co. When she first viewed the quake devastation at her boutique--half a block north of the Northridge Meadows apartments, where the temblor killed 16 people--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 and worked out deals to defer payments. She tapped her savings while waiting for word on her Small Business Administration loan application. But Jones now sees just half as many customers as before the quake, and she’s selling more tacky wax and earthquake-proof plate hangers than expensive china.

“We’re a breakable business,” she said with a sigh. “It’s going to take a while for people to buy breakables again.”

Merchants say they’ve lost business because former customers who lived in now-condemned apartments have left the area, while homeowners are too busy fixing their houses. Some shopkeepers saw a temporary jump in sales following the earthquake, which they attribute to sightseers who made the Northridge Meadows apartments a tourist stop. But those crowds have abated, and for many, business has slowed again.

Demolition of Northridge Meadows is scheduled for May 2, and business owners now worry that the tear-down process will prevent customers from getting to them.

Some businesses 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 just now starting to repair cracked walls and damaged floors and ceilings.

Down the street, Roya Saberzadeh, owner of Rochie’s Greek Row, said sales are half the pre-quake level. Her clothing and memorabilia shop caters to Cal State Northridge sororities and fraternities, but enrollment is down and many campus facilities are closed.

With a $5,000 monthly overhead, Saberzadeh is losing money and wonders how she’ll replace wrecked equipment. She got a 15% rent reduction but is disputing rent payments from just after the quake.

She’d like to get an SBA loan and start a mail-order catalogue to lessen her dependence on CSUN. But her loan application hasn’t been filed because she must re-create necessary tax documents that were lost in a fire that destroyed her family’s Chatsworth house a year ago.

The 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 it wasn’t living in the house during the quake. The family continues to pay a $2,300 monthly mortgage, plus $800 rent for two rooms where it now lives.

“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.”

Some shop owners are devising new ways to drum up sales. The Kids at Heart gift shop and Coco’s restaurant, both in Northridge Garden Center, offered discounted food and merchandise one recent Saturday to customers in pajamas. With sales off 30%, Kids at Heart owner Laura D’Angelo said, “you can’t just have a sale, you have to have an event.”

Others are tightening their belts. At Kimary’s Nail Boutique, where business is down 15%, owner Kim Dellibovi obtained a $10,000 bank loan, but she cut out such extras as silk plant hangings, premium hand soap, ceramic decor and free cookies, and replaced her “super-duper” phone with a basic model. Many customers have trickled back in. “Their nails were a mess,” Dellibovi said.

But some find their hope running thin. Harry Paissides, co-owner of Reseda Hye Market, said 80% of his business disappeared when many of the Middle Eastern immigrants who frequented his specialty grocery were forced from nearby apartments.

Sujatha Balasubramanian, owner of Paru’s Indian restaurant, and Gianni Fontana di Trevi, who owns a dry-cleaning shop, used to rely on referrals and employees from Northridge Fashion Center for business. With that mall closed for several months, they wonder how long they can hang on.

Landlords also complain of trying times. Bill Matthews, who manages two strip malls on the block that are owned by his family, has completed repairs there and has been negotiating with tenants over rents. He said he’s trying to restructure his debt with a mortgage banker whose attitude is, “If you can’t enforce contracts with tenants, we will.”

At Northridge Garden Center, new owner Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn., won’t charge tenants rent while structural repairs are under way.

But some shopkeepers decided not to wait. Helmut Behensky, owner of Bea’s Swim & Sport, pictured an aftershock hitting while customers were trying on swimsuits, so he reopened his shop in Thousand Oaks.

But others, like Jackie Jones, plan to stick it out.

On a wall by her shop entrance, she hung the plate that outlasted the quake as a symbol of endurance and a reminder that “I’m supposed to be here.”