Die-Hard Sears Building Falls to Bulldozer

The blackened cinder-block walls that make up the quake-ravaged hulk of a former Sears outlet store on Tapo Street will finally come down after more than two years of wrangling between the city and the building’s owners.

Proprietors and employees of neighboring businesses--in what was once the heart of Simi Valley’s business district--breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday as workers bulldozed the damaged building’s foundation, exposing the loose sandy soil that gave way during the 1994 Northridge earthquake and brought down its roof.

What is left of the building will be reduced to rubble and carted away by this weekend.

“It’s unbelievable why it took so long,” said Jamie Michaels, manager of Oasis Billiard Club and pro shop, one of the few businesses remaining in the adjacent strip mall.

Other businesses in the mall, which was built in the early 1960s on the west side of Tapo Street, between Cochran Street and Los Angeles Avenue, were shut down or moved after the quake.

The earthquake caused extensive damage to the building leased to a Sears outlet, a Pic ‘N’ Save next door, which has since been razed, and an Italian delicatessen, whose interior is still marked by shattered ceiling tiles, wiring and insulation after its ceiling also caved in.

What was left of the Sears building was torched by an arsonist in October 1995, but the site and the adjacent deli have become a haven for squatters and vandals.

“There was a guy living in [the restaurant] with a television for a month or so,” Michaels said. “I don’t know where he got the electricity.”

The crumbling building has stymied efforts by the city to revitalize the area and has hurt neighboring businesses.

“Our business has been affected over the years tremendously,” Michaels said. “When [people] drive by, it looks like this mall is completely gone.”

Michaels said business at the Oasis--site of this year’s three-cushion billiards national championship--has been down 30% in the past year.

Don Penman, Simi Valley’s assistant city manager, said the Sears building’s demolition comes after months of stalling by the building’s owners, among them McAllister Investments in Downey and Lawrence Morse, a certified public accountant in Beverly Hills. Morse manages the property and the abandoned delicatessen.

Penman said the city had reached an agreement with the owners June 17 that gave them three months to rebuild or rehabilitate the Sears building, but they missed the Tuesday deadline. The bulldozer and crew arrived at 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Morse said he was surprised that the building was being torn down, because he believed his agreement with the city gave him 120 days to file the permits needed to rebuild or repair the building, rather than 90 days, as Penman contends.

Portions of the damaged structure were still salvageable prior to it being demolished, Morse maintains.

“The slab and the plumbing in the existing foundation were still usable,” he said. “The city, acting in what I believe was a precipitous manner, moved a little too quickly.”

Morse valued the foundation and the three remaining walls at $300,000 to $500,000. He said razing the structure will make it even more difficult to find anyone interested in buying or developing the site.

“It seems to me quite improper,” Morse said. “While it may make certain people happy, I believe in the long run it won’t be good for the community.”

Local merchants, on the other hand, said tearing down the building is merely the fist step in restoring Tapo Street.

“This was the original Simi’s little mall,” said lifelong resident Pam Hunter, who owns Canine Castle, a dog grooming shop on Eileen Street that looks out on the former Sears site.

“There’s a lot of history here,” Hunter said. “I think they could really do something with this place.”