THE CALIFORNIA DELUGE : Luck Runs Out for Landmark Malibu Nursery

It has been a local landmark in Malibu for 21 years--a place where celebrities and everyday folks alike would stop for a holiday bouquet, a potted plant or just a chat with the family that runs the nursery called Cosentino’s.

But the popular store on Pacific Coast Highway has also been a magnet for Malibu’s twin scourges--fire and flood.

On Tuesday--after surviving years of spectacular storms and brush fires--the nursery that charmed Malibu residents with its homey, family atmosphere finally met its match. Much of Cosentino’s was washed under the brown waters of churning Las Flores Creek.

“We got everything out, but you know, when you spend your whole life on something, it’s hard,” said Joie Cosentino, as she watched a wooden armoire from the store bob in the creek. “That’s my store. I never thought I would see this happen.”

Her brother, Tom Cosentino, said the family will regroup from the latest disaster and decide whether to rebuild.

“It’s a good location,” said Tom Cosentino, 35, one of five children who have joined the family business. “This business has been our life. It’s kept us together and made us a family. We would really like to keep it going if we can.”

Many locals agreed, as they joined half a dozen television camera crews in watching the back of the nursery slip into the creek. In a town sometimes accused of lacking a soul, the New York natives are pillars of hospitality and community.

“The Cosentino family is a real Malibu institution,” said George Cooper, echoing the feelings of many who watched. “They have taken a role in helping in all the disasters--sandbagging, giving away flowers. . . . They are really nice people. It’s just really sad.”

Joe and Josephine Cosentino brought their family west in 1973 to launch a business in Malibu--starting out with a produce cart on Pacific Coast Highway. The family soon opened the nursery at the foot of Las Flores Canyon, near the Malibu Sea Lion restaurant, and eventually expanded to a total of four stores, all in Malibu.

From those first years, flooding in the narrow, shallow Las Flores Creek bed was a persistent problem for the original Cosentino’s. But with the entire family filling sandbags and clearing drains, the Las Flores nursery always was spared severe damage.

Television news crews were often on hand to record the action, as Cosentinos slogged through the mud to save their store yet again. The locale has become so familiar over the years that some news crews roll there at the first sign of trouble in Malibu.

But this time, the Cosentino story would not have its usual happy ending.

Despite frantic digging done by a county backhoe Tuesday morning, there was nothing that could prevent the roaring chocolate-brown creek from overflowing its banks and undercutting the nursery foundation.

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Joie Cosentino wept as she watched the store begin to collapse into the creek. Later, she passed out lilies, purple daisies and sunflowers to friends and bystanders--creating an incongruous scene as a clutch of people milled about in driving rain, holding their bright bouquets.

Said the youngest Cosentino with resignation: “What else are we going to do with them?”

Tom Cosentino said the family expected trouble from the rains, because local hillsides were stripped of vegetation in the Malibu firestorm 14 months ago.

“I think we are going to let the dust, or mud, settle and see how much damage we experienced and then see what we want to do,” he said. “We will have to sit down as a family and see what we are going to do.”