Adding Night Life Offered as Way to Revitalize Area Hit Hard by Recession : Development: Theaters and upscale restaurants are planned in El Segundo as part of a strategy to bolster retail and office markets from LAX to Manhattan Beach.
Real estate developers have a strategy to boost the sagging retail and office market between L.A. International Airport and Manhattan Beach: Add more night life.
Pacific Theatres Corp. plans to build an 18-screen multiplex in El Segundo. The complex would be the South Bay’s largest and would be built across the street from a new Wolfgang Puck restaurant due to open next year.
Far less certain, but still on the drawing board, are plans for Fashion Walk, a nearby entertainment and retail attraction modeled after CityWalk in Universal City. The project, to be built on Rosecrans Avenue at the San Diego (405) Freeway, would go forward if a development group persuades Los Angeles fashion wholesalers to move to a proposed showroom complex called Fashion City.
“There is a crying need for (the entertainment projects) in the South Bay,” said Alan Schwartz, president of the South Bay Assn. of Chambers of Commerce.
Hopes are that the retail and entertainment projects will bring new energy to an area that has been suffering from cuts in the aerospace industry and other manufacturing firms. Even in better times, business and industrial parks lacked shops and restaurants.
The recession left business owners and developers with large chunks of empty space. Office vacancy in the El Segundo and Manhattan Beach area was 20% in the first three months of this year, compared to 14.9% a year earlier, according to the real estate brokerage firm of Grubb & Ellis Co.
Last year, Continental Development Corp. was left with an empty, 475,000-square-foot office building at Rosecrans Avenue and Nash Street after TRW and Hughes moved out. So it embarked on a $7-million project to market the building to companies that need smaller space, or to professionals such as lawyers, doctors and accountants.
At the same time, the company remodeled its ground floor for retailers and restaurants. Among the first to sign up was Puck, whose renowned restaurants include Spago in West Hollywood, an entertainment industry nightspot.
Across from Puck’s eatery will be the $12.5-million Beach Cities Cinema, scheduled to open around Christmas, 1995. It will have digital sound, 70-millimeter projectors, automatic ticket dispensers and two snack bars. The complex, which has an atrium lobby, would have 1,500 parking spots.
“We just felt the area needed a theater of this magnitude,” said Milt Moritz, vice president of advertising for Pacific. “We’ll be able to offer everything from art house films to commercial movies. There won’t be any need to go beyond (the South Bay).”
Continental is working to sign up other tenants for the complex, Moritz said.
Continental hopes that the Puck restaurant, movie theater and other projects in the works will give the stretch of Rosecrans Avenue more night life. Already, there is a Houston’s restaurant across the street.
“It’s becoming a destination area,” said Janet Lowder, a restaurant consultant in Rancho Palos Verdes. “It’s becoming a draw for restaurants.”
The new El Segundo projects also could draw travelers from Los Angeles International Airport, who have few entertainment options other than hotel restaurants and in-room movies, she said.
“This is just a short taxi ride away,” Lowder said.
Restaurant and retail businesses have been going through tough times as families have cut back on spending. And developers have not found it easy to line up financing.
Fashion City has been trying to attract enough tenants to persuade a potential financing partner that the project would be viable. Tenants, primarily fashion wholesalers, would be housed in a showroom building where fashion buyers from across the country could select their wares.
“It’s like swimming through molasses to get where we want to go,” Schwartz said.
Part of the problem, he said, is the perception that there won’t be much else for the fashion buyers to do once the workday is over. Their solution: Fashion Walk, to be built next door and open to the public, would include restaurants, bars, shops and flight-simulator rides. Fashion videos could be displayed on large outdoor TV screens.
Even if Fashion City isn’t built, Schwartz said, developers may create another project for the site.
“But it makes more sense when you tie it in to an industry in the area,” he said. “I guess we could do Aerospace Walk, but it might not have the same pizazz.”
