Rebirth of a Landmark : Fillmore: Grocery that collapsed in the earthquake will reopen next week in a steel-reinforced structure with a vintage look.

Ten months after a devastating earthquake rumbled through Fillmore, the city’s landmark grocery is on the verge of ringing up its first sale.

But the new Central Market will not be a mere replica of the 1950s concrete block building that crumbled so easily that Monday morning in January, when a 6.8-magnitude quake splintered out from Northridge.

It is now a dressed-up, steel-reinforced structure that city planners say will be a centerpiece of Fillmore’s new downtown: pedestrian-friendly buildings that resemble the quaint, early century style of days long passed.

“The (old) building really didn’t have any character architecturally,” said Tony Perez, the Fillmore city planner supervising reconstruction of the Central Market.

“Now it’s all brick veneer, with some historic patterning and a lot of wooden transom windows,” he said. “And we’re doing similar types of changes to the back, so it’s not going to be just in the front.”

Ironically, the City Council was set to consider the sweeping series of new design standards at its Jan. 17 meeting. But the earthquake that day delayed adoption of the Fillmore Specific Plan, a thick guideline to development in the central city of the historic town of 12,000.

“It really teaches you to do your planning when you have the time to do it,” Perez said. “That’s the big thing we learned.”

Gir Byeon, owner of the property at 351 Central Ave. where the market is situated, said he does not mind investing in the extras that the city has required.

“This is a standout building,” Byeon said. “The city is trying to ask the other (property owners) to be the same way soon, with old-looking buildings. But for now, this will be the best one.”

Under terms of the Specific Plan, landowners are not required to improve their structures until they apply for building permits, when the stricter land-use policies will be enforced. But city planners say the property owners will be motivated to reinvest as the neighborhood upgrades.

Byeon agrees.

“This will encourage other people to rebuild,” he said. “When they see the store is doing OK with the community, they will have courage to build up again. Right now, some of the property owners have their doubts.”

While Byeon owns the building that houses the Central Market, Sam Sunner owns the business. Sunner said he plans to open the market next week.

“I’m very excited about the reopening,” he said. “It’s a brand new building, but it looks like a very old building. If there is another earthquake, this will be the last building to go down.”

Sunner, who also owns Saticoy Liquor in Ventura and Sam’s Market in Santa Paula, said he received more than 1,000 phones calls from customers urging him to rebuild.

“This was a big challenge, but we accepted because the whole city wanted us back,” Sunner said, walking through the shell of the new market. “Anything and everything the City Council could do to help us get back, they did.”

Contractor Marwin Bustami of Diamond Bar said complying with the stricter design standards did not pose any problems, in part because the city contributed as much as $10,000 for improvements such as the beige, concrete building trim, new sidewalks and landscaping planters outside the store.

“The city is very cooperative,” Bustami said. “They give you the guidelines on what they need, they help you come up with the plans.”

The Central Market is not the only business that will soon recover fully from the Northridge earthquake.

The Mirage women’s clothing store, across the street from the market, will reopen at the same site by next week, proprietor Shirley Wright said.

Like so many other merchants, Wright moved her shop into a temporary dome set up in the city park a few weeks after the quake.

“If it hadn’t been for this tent, I would have been out of business,” she said. “You can’t just take nine months off. But in the long run, I’m going to have a prettier store than I did before.”