Laguna Beach Still Waiting for Shoppers

A week after torrents of mud and water slid through the community, turning the business district into a veritable ghost town, residents and merchants are crying in frustration: Laguna Beach is cleaned up and open for business.

Merchants are complaining that with the last big shopping weekend before Christmas just days away, tourists seem to be avoiding Laguna Beach for fear that the streets are still muddy and swamped.

Not true, officials say.

“Everything is back to normal and in working order,” said Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Ray Lardie.

Laguna Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, which were closed after the storm, are now open, he said, and only a small section of the boardwalk at Main Beach remains closed.

But many merchants are worried that the typical crowds are staying away during what traditionally is one of the busiest times of the year.

“For the past week this town has been totally dead,” said Leslie DeDuijtsche of the Greeters Corner Restaurant on Main Beach. “We have had more sea gulls than people. We are all standing here looking at each other saying ‘what is going on?’ ”

Shawn Palek, manager of the Renaissance Culture Cuisine restaurant, said business has been awful lately and blames news accounts of the heavy storm that hit the city.

“People are coming by and asking if we are open,” he said. “We were open for business the next day after the storm.”

The storm blasted across Orange County on Dec. 7, causing mudslides, flooding and road closures.

Laguna Beach was particularly hard hit with nearly 8 inches of rain falling over that weekend. The day after the storm, residents, weary cleanup crews and merchants were busy with shovels, wheelbarrows and any other tools they could find to scoop up the mud.

Residents rebounded quickly from the rains. After all, they are not strangers to natural and man-made disasters. There was the firestorm that damaged or destroyed more than 400 homes four years ago and the devastating flood afterward.

“The city is used to it,” said Amanda Oliviera, a clerk at Bushard’s Pharmacy, which has seen business drop over the last week. “We are still the same village, and it’s a great place to come shopping.”

Last Friday, merchants that were hardest hit began posting “El Nino sale” signs to move goods damaged in the storm, said Howard Levin, executive director of the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Just two businesses out of about 150 downtown remain closed this week and most of the restaurants haven’t missed a beat, he said.

This year’s storm also kicked off an effort to prevent future damages.

The Wild Oats Market on Broadway, two blocks from the beach, was one of a few retailers that emerged from the storm unscathed because the store recently installed custom-fitted plastic shields, encased in steel brackets, across storefronts to keep water and mud out.

“We had the floodgates up and nothing came in the store,” said Richard Miller, produce manager.

Nearby business owners began inquiring about the flood barriers after the storm, he said.

“They were amazed we had no damage at all and they got flooded,” Miller said.

The chamber has recruited a local architect and a construction company to design and mass-produce the flood shields for local businesses, Levin said.

“Some of the merchants who had it had no damage whatsoever,” Levin said. “So it’s been available, but no one moved on it before. Or they didn’t know where to go to buy it.”