Businesses Blame Woes on Lengthy Cleanup Project

Hallmark and the holidays usually go together like turkey and stuffing.

But at Lianne’s Hallmark card shop in Long Beach’s Marina Pacifica Mall, the season was marred by an estimated 10% drop in sales, said store owner Ron Iseri.

Iseri and many business owners at the mall say they have been struggling since September, when much of the mall’s parking area was sealed off so workers could clean up oil-tainted soil. They erected fencing around the lot and piled up mounds of dirt, giving many passersby the impression that the center was closed. Other customers were driven off by a shortage of parking, Iseri said.

Business at Belgian Waffle Inn nearby has dropped about 40% during the cleanup, owner Lisa Chen said.

The cleanup originally was to have been completed in October, but now won’t be finished until later this month, said officials of Bank of America, which owns the mall. The cleanup has taken longer than expected because the contamination exceeded initial estimates at the site, a former oil field, said bank spokeswoman Nicole Sunahara.

To compensate for the cleanup hassles, the bank reduced or waived the rent for many tenants in November and December.

But some mall business owners are seething.

“I am really upset with Bank of America because they are burying us alive,” Iseri said.

Since the project started, one tenant, Acapulco restaurant, has shut down. Restaurant officials said the cleanup work was one of the reasons they decided to close.

Crews halted work the weeks before and after Christmas, said Stephen Torres, a project manager with Lavine-Fricke, the Irvine firm in charge of the cleanup. “We have tried to reduce the impact to tenants during the holiday season,” he said.

The cleanup didn’t disrupt business at Marie Callender’s Restaurant & Bakery at the east end of the mall, said Tim Haisman, assistant manager. Most work was halted near the restaurant after Thanksgiving, and the parking area reopened after a brief closure.

“Customers have told me that it was annoying to them, but they still came,” Haisman said.

At Trader Joe’s next door, business dropped about 5% when cleanup crews were working in front of the store, manager Tim Mullins said.

“Our customers are very resilient. They came in, though they were much less happy to come in,” he said.

Bank of America is removing the contaminated soil as part of a deal to sell the mall, which has been struggling for years despite its location just blocks from such upscale Long Beach communities as Naples and Belmont Shore.

Though the mall has room for about 100 merchants, only 23 tenants currently lease space.

“It has been bad for the last 10 years,” said Chen, who has operated the Belgian Waffle Inn since 1976. “(The cleanup) is the icing on top of the disaster.”

In its short-lived heyday in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the complex on Pacific Coast Highway near 2nd Street attracted major tenants. But businesses slowly departed. In recent years, Bogart’s nightclub and Houlihan’s restaurant have closed. The only department store, Buffums, closed in 1992 when the chain went out of business.

Bank of America foreclosed on the mall in 1989 and tried to line up another buyer. But several deals have fallen through, according to Sunahara, the bank spokeswoman.

The bank has reached a tentative agreement to sell the mall to Westwood-based Trident Group, which plans to redesign the mall and attract larger, outlet-type stores and a major supermarket. The deal is still in escrow and has not been signed, Sunahara said.