A Climate Change in Hermosa Beach : Restaurants, Night Life Revitalized

The weekend wait at Brewski’s is two hours. Cafe Boogaloo just opened and already they’re packed. And at Sangria, an upscale Spanish-style restaurant and nightclub, patrons stand in line until the early morning to get on the only dance floor in town.

This is the new Hermosa Beach, where business is finally booming.

After years of sluggish commerce, the beach city has embarked on a revitalization effort that officials say is bringing thriving retail businesses and bustling night life to a once sleepy town. Over the next two years, the city will pump $7 million into the Downtown Revitalization Project, according to Councilman Sam Edgerton. The plan calls for wider sidewalks, improved parking conditions and the conversion of the downtown area into an outdoor plaza.

“We’ve had this explosion of new and trendy businesses coming to town,” Edgerton said. “This is the first time in years that the community can eat in Hermosa.”

In roughly the last six months eight businesses have opened, and like many in the city, Edgerton has visions of creating something comparable to the Third Street Promenade or Old Pasadena--an open air marketplace with sidewalk cafes and boutiques. Having this kind of establishment in this young town where 30 is the median age and more than half the population is college-educated, he said, will give people something else to do at the beach besides, well, go to the beach.

Plans to reinvent Hermosa Beach will be funded primarily through a 2% utility tax that residents and businesses pay for capital improvement projects. The Downtown Enhancement Commission, a city-appointed board helping to oversee the renovations, will provide $600,000 from a parking fund and additional money will come when the city adds parking meters to Pier Avenue and the downtown parking lots.

In addition to the downtown improvements, Edgerton said the city hopes to restore its ailing pier. Nearly $1.5 million allocated from the 1992 voter-approved Proposition A bond initiative has been earmarked for the repairs.

Business in this city of 1.3 square miles has lagged since its 1920s resort town heyday. In the 1970s, shopping malls came to neighboring Torrance, bringing competition that squeezed out many of Hermosa Beach’s retail stores. The city is nestled between Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, which conducted their major renovations in the late 1980s. During the South Bay aerospace recession in the early 1990s, conditions worsened.

“We thought about shutting down day to day,” said Mayor John Bowler, who owns the Fat Face Fenner Saloon, a downtown restaurant pub. “Business was that bad.”

City officials were of little help for a long time, Bowler said. They made it expensive for old businesses to expand, he said, and almost discouraged new business.

“There was a really anti-business, anti-alcohol sentiment in this town,” Bowler said. “The city was not very receptive to new business.”

Bowler helped found the Hermosa Beach Restaurant and Tavern Owners Assn. in 1988 to create a support network for owners. Eventually, he said, his frustration led him to run for City Council.

The new council is looking to fill its empty beachfront retail space and create revenue for the town. “We want residents to be able to spend their money in Hermosa Beach,” Edgerton said.

Even a former council member agreed. Chuck Sheldon, who served on the council from 1987 to 1991 before he decided not to run again, said the council talked about revitalization but the primary focus at the time was on building a resort hotel. Sheldon said his colleagues did not consider other ways to redevelop the area.

“The majority of the current City Council is pro-business and that certainly wasn’t true during my years on the council,” Sheldon said.

Patricia Spiritus says that when she opened her Hamilton-Gregg Brewworks, a do-it-yourself brewery, 1 1/2 years ago, city officials picked apart her idea of putting in shuffleboard, saying “it would encourage social activity.” She described city officials as smug and accused them of delaying procedures for opening her brewery.

Nowadays, Spiritus said the climate in this beach city has changed.

“There’s a new generation of civil servants at City Hall,” Spiritus said. “They’re much more cooperative now. They want to help businesses open.”