Culver City Extends Pawnshop Moratorium

Culver City’s City Council has voted to extend a year-old moratorium on new pawnshops and secondhand dealers until February 1998 while the city’s planning staff reviews the guidelines and regulations that apply to these stores.

Last January, the City Council temporarily prohibited any new pawnshops after an increasing number of those businesses began moving to Culver City. At that time, city staff began examining its procedures for approving new pawnbroker shops. Those guidelines are still being researched and developed.

New procedures being considered include requiring a mandated distance between pawnshops, limiting the hours and days of operation and reviewing the zones in which the businesses can operate. The 34 pawnshops and secondhand dealer stores in Culver City will not be affected by the moratorium, which will come back to the council for adoption Jan. 13.

“It’s a quality of life issue for our residents,” said Councilman Mike Balkman. “We’re looking to see if they are neighborhood-serving businesses. If they don’t serve the neighborhood, maybe they shouldn’t be here.”

Industry leaders said they support the council’s desire to protect the community, but warned that pawnshops have been dogged by an unfair stigma that they attract bad elements and illegal activities.

“I can’t blame a city for regulating any business if saturation becomes a problem,” said Dennis Hooker, president of the San Jose-based Collateral Loan and Secondhand Dealers Assn., which represents 400 businesses around the state. “[In the past] there was an influx of these inadequate pawnshops--they’d deal in virtually anything just to hang up a pawnbroker shingle.”

But Hooker said recent legislation requiring pawnbrokers to have at least $100,000 in liquid assets and other regulations have helped change the industry.

“There’s really nothing nefarious about pawnbrokers,” he said. “If you go down to local pawnshops, you’ll find Middle America doing business there.”