Recovery Milepost : Mall Symbolizes Quake's Force as Well as Partial Comeback of Northridge

By PATRICE APODACA

Dec. 10, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

There is no Santa at the Center Court of the Northridge Fashion Center this holiday season, and no carolers stroll the darkened main corridors. But it’s not the ghost of Christmas past that haunts this mall--it is last January’s earthquake.

For Northridge residents, the mall has symbolized the earthquake’s terrible force. The temblor crumpled pillars, knocked down ceilings and moved whole walls inside the structure. And today, the mostly empty mall just a half mile from the quake’s epicenter stands as a sad reminder of the rebuilding that remains to be done.

Yet it is also a milepost on the community’s journey back.

The shopping mall’s two biggest retailers, Sears and the Broadway, managed to reopen last month with showcase replacement stores, just in time for the all-important holiday buying season. And so far, shoppers have had little trouble finding their way back: sales are brisk.

For the retailing industry, of course, ‘tis the season for 40% of its annual sales. For people, it’s a time to look back and ahead. These mundane and profound facts are converging at the cavernous Northridge mall, whose future is tied to the community’s.

“It’s been a long year,” said Alice DuBois of Granada Hills as she shopped the Broadway for Christmas gifts. “Maybe this Christmas season will give people a little extra spirit, and something else to think about--just the thought that we all survived it and were determined to survive it.”

On a recent weekday, the new Sears and Broadway were busy with holiday shoppers, many of whom said they’d been preoccupied with earthquake repairs and hadn’t done much shopping lately. Others said they had been traveling to shopping centers in Woodland Hills, Glendale and Thousand Oaks, and were now pleased to have their old mall--a small part of it anyway--back in business.

“It’s like a wonderland, with all the lights,” said DuBois. “I’ve been waiting a long time. I kept riding by and saying, ‘When is it going to open, when is it going to open?’ ”

Actually, most of the wonderland is off-limits. The two department stores are isolated at opposite ends of the sprawling mall, and everything else is closed--the lengthy connecting corridors of shops sealed off. To get from Sears to the Broadway, most shoppers drive.

The mall’s partial recovery mirrors the Northridge area itself, where residents are still grappling with their own repairs. New piles of earthquake rubble appear daily by the curbs. Many homeowners are only now starting their rebuilding jobs.

Indeed, several Sears shoppers recently were buying hardware supplies for home repair work, not Christmas presents.

Before the temblor, the Northridge center was one of the Los Angeles area’s largest and most successful shopping malls. But in the intervening months, other malls in the region that reopened sooner have benefited at its expense.

Across the San Fernando Valley, fully operating shopping centers are reporting sales increases of 10% to 30% over a year ago, and some mall retailers say sales are so brisk that year-to-date totals have already surpassed last year.

But Northridge merchants won’t automatically recapture those customers, nor will the heavy spending--driven in part by an infusion of federal assistance and quake insurance funds--necessarily continue. Nor is a mostly empty mall much of a lure.

Of course, executives at Sears and Broadway are betting that the stores will quickly re-establish themselves as community fixtures.

Sears, which spent $8 million on rebuilding after the earthquake, has turned the Northridge store into a model for new design and merchandising concepts that are being implemented throughout the nationwide chain, said general manager Ed Tiritilli.

The store, now one of the largest in the Sears chain, has also beefed up its staff to about 400 workers, 70 more than before the quake.

“It’s beautiful,” said Marise Moore as she and her husband, Jack, strolled through the remodeled Sears. They were shopping for Christmas gifts as well as light switches and other items for the quake repairs they’d only recently begun at their Granada Hills home.

Over at the Broadway, customers toting bright red holiday bags whisked through the store. Like Sears, the Broadway boasts that its rebuilt Northridge store shows off its new design and merchandising strategy along with its sleek facade.

But the world’s best remodeling job may not be enough to win over some earthquake survivors. The quake’s most searing images include those of collapsing stores and parking garages. At Northridge, a janitor--one of few people at work during the early-morning temblor--was severely injured by one of two demolished parking decks.

A Christmas shopper who didn’t want her name used said her recent trip to Broadway was her first to any department store since the earthquake.

“I’m a little nervous,” she confessed.