Quake-Damaged Business Dismantled : Market: Owner says it’s too late to be sad as he watches demolition with relief and talks about rebuilding his business.

Shafts of sunlight filtered through the holes in the ceiling of Joe Hijaz’s Mayflower Market in Moorpark.

The 55-year-old store owner fingered his prayer beads and smiled cautiously as a worker knocked another hole in the roof of the store that was damaged beyond repair in the Jan. 17 earthquake.

“This is what God has decided for us,” Hijaz said, watching demolition of the building that he’s owned since moving here from Jordan more than 20 years ago.

After waiting for six months to get the permits and funding necessary to knock the building down, Hijaz said he long ago passed the point of sadness. “It’s more of a relief to see things happening.”

Workers spent much of Tuesday pulling apart the roof of the market on a corner of High Street in downtown Moorpark. It is the only business in the city that has to be demolished because of the Northridge quake, Councilman Scott Montgomery said.

Montgomery said the city has moved as quickly as it could to begin the demolition so that Hijaz could rebuild on the same spot. But, the councilman said, six months has been a long time to wait.

“I think our response time was about average,” Montgomery said. “When you’re working with the federal government, though, you have to expect delays because of the red tape.”

Since the earthquake, the city has allowed Hijaz and his son to operate the market out of a detached back storage room that was undamaged.

A sign at the front of the roped-off building points customers to the back of the store. Hijaz has set up shop in three large shipping containers, each about eight feet tall and crammed with goods. A temporary roof he built connects the containers with the storage room.

Hijaz said sales have fallen from what they were before the quake. He said the sooner the demolition is finished, the sooner he can rebuild and the family business can return to normal.

Hijaz will pay about $1,800 toward the demolition costs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay the remaining $17,000 it will take to clean the asbestos from the old building, knock down the brick walls and remove the rubble.

Hijaz is trying to get a low-interest Small Business Administration loan to cover the $500,000 he said it will cost to rebuild. He said he wants to expand the store slightly.

He said the SBA told him that he might qualify for a $200,000 loan, but has not come through with the money. He said he is looking for bank loans to make up the difference. He had no earthquake insurance to cover the loss. In any event, he said, he will have to wait for the federal loan before any construction can begin.

“The SBA is even slower than FEMA,” he said. “Every day we talk to the lady and she has about 20 questions and each question means another delay. I don’t know. It’s 19 years that I’m in this business, but this kind of thing is very hard.”

The demolition team working on the market is scheduled to use bulldozers to knock down the walls of the building this morning, and Hijaz hopes to start rebuilding within three months.

“Who knows really,” he said. “You know the routine . . . there’s a lot of paperwork and red tape that you have to go through first.”