Residents Push for Cleanup of Site : Simi Valley: Two vacant, quake-ravaged businesses have stirred neighbors’ anger.

Eight months after the Jan. 21 earthquake, two caved-in Simi Valley stores are attracting trash, transients and the anger of neighbors who want the ruins repaired or replaced.

Landlords of the vacant Pic ‘N’ Save and Sears Outlet on Tapo Street said Tuesday they still have not firmed up plans for their adjoining buildings.

Pic ‘N’ Save officials said they will announce their plans within six weeks, while a Beverly Hills accountant said his partnership is searching for a new tenant and seeking federal emergency loans to rebuild the uninsured Sears building.

Frustrated by the delay, members of Simi Valley Neighborhood Council 3 say they will meet Thursday evening at 7:30 at City Hall to decide how to lobby the city to force reconstruction.

Eleanor Kieffer, a neighboring homeowner who has gathered 17 signatures on the petition, calls the buildings “the two thorns in my side.”

“This is exactly how the earthquake left them,” Kieffer said Tuesday, walking past the steel braces, 6-foot-high cyclone fence and 5-foot-high weeds that have sprung up since the store roofs fell in. “It’s like they’re frozen in time.”

Youths jump the fence regularly to spray graffiti inside the Sears store, while transients often camp out behind the Pic ‘N’ Save, she said.

“It’s really sad,” Kieffer said. “All the businesses around here have rebuilt except for these two, and--please--they’re big companies. They’re not a mom-and-pop business.”

City officials say they are trying to be as patient with the store owners as they are with homeowners and other landlords struggling to pay for earthquake repairs.

“We’re trying to work with them to assist them,” Assistant City Manager Mike Sedell said. “But we’re also trying to put gentle pressure on them to have that building reconstructed as quick as it can be done.”

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Under city orders, the landlords fenced off the stores and cleaned up trash dumped there, Sedell said, but the city has not threatened any other enforcement action--yet.

“The city is walking a tightrope between the rights of an individual property owner and the needs for a positive aesthetic environment in the community,” he said. “In terms of health, safety and welfare, the city has a legal ability to go in and correct deficiencies. In terms of telling someone they have to go in and fix some damage . . . that’s not a detriment to health and public welfare, it’s very problematic.”

The 250-store Pic ‘N’ Save chain is on the verge of announcing its plans for the damaged Simi Valley store, said Patricia Wehner, the chain’s senior vice president of real estate construction.

“We are not ready to make an announcement yet, since everything is not finalized,” Wehner said Tuesday. “We’ve been looking at our alternatives as far as repairing it, demolishing and starting over again or moving on to a different property.”

All but two of the 29 Pic ‘N’ Saves damaged by the quake have reopened, except for stores in Simi Valley and Chatsworth, she said. And the chain has sent someone out regularly to remove trash and abandoned appliances and furniture dumped beside the building, she said.

The Sears building is not so close to being repaired, said part-owner Lawrence Morse, a Beverly Hills CPA.

“We’re hoping to be able to rebuild at some point in time,” said Morse, a member of the Morse-Valley and Nogales partnership that owns the Sears store and most of the neighboring buildings in the shopping center. “Right now, we don’t have a tenant.”

Selling the vacant 30,000-square-foot hulk presents a chicken-and-egg dilemma, Morse said. Should the owners find a tenant first and rebuild to suit, or replace the store and hope for a tenant who likes the layout?

“We’re losing about $15,000 a month” on the Sears store and a vacant, roofless 3,000-square-foot deli next door, Morse said. “It’s a very difficult situation.”