In the Rebound Business

In the pretty little town of Laguna Beach, every small shop is its own story of hopes and dreams of success, fulfillment and independence. So when fire or other catastrophe visits, as it is almost supernaturally inclined to do here, it is like an indignant challenge to the human spirit.

Five years ago, a momentous firestorm damaged or destroyed more than 400 homes and yet the city survived and rebuilt. This year flood and mudslides attacked 300 more dwellings and marched on the downtown, and again Laguna bounced back.

And early last Monday, when a blaze claimed a circa-World War I building, charring or outright ruining 10 businesses just before the make-or-break holiday season, merchants emerged with their usual resilience and optimism.

No, the disaster was nowhere near the enormous scale of the earlier fire and the El Nino floods that killed two people. In comparison, this latest incident was more like a bop in the nose. But for entrepreneurs whose livelihoods depend, in most cases, on their small business, the fire that caused an estimated $4.5 million in damage was harsh and horribly timed.

There’s an insurance company, a therapist, a shoe store and other retailers. Most are insured, although not always sufficiently. A few carried no protection. Retailers face lost customers and a bleak holiday season unless they can pull off a miracle by restocking lightning quick and finding an emergency location until they can clean up or rebuild.

For small-business people like these, “you’re right on the edge,” said Mayor Steve Dicterow.

Business and city officials are trying to find temporary digs for the burned-out stores. Time is of the essence; on Dec. 4, the city holds its Light Up Laguna evening of festivities to kick off the holiday season. On cue, the colored lights at City Hall are switched on and police cars and firetrucks turn on their sirens, signaling merchants to flip on their yule bulbs.

Carolers will sing and part of Forest Avenue--where the fire occurred--will be closed to motorists, allowing pedestrians to wander freely.

Despite the latest misfortune, the burned-out businesspeople say they will survive and prosper again.

Laura Downing

The rains came down more like bullets than droplets last December and January, sending water and mud marauding through the women’s clothing shop named after Laura Downing, wrecking the new carpet. “When that happened, I thought ‘This is unusual’ and would never happen again,” said Downing, 34.

It did.

This time it was fire and the carpet got trashed again--along with racks of garments. Downing was just financially recovering from the last disaster and doesn’t think she carries enough insurance to see her through this one.

“In the last two weeks, I felt we were just coming out of the slump we had during the bad weather last year,” said the store owner, who has been at this location for six years. She’s still going through damaged wares and trying to assess the loss, part of her not really wanting to know how bad it is.

“I don’t want to think about it right now,” she said wearily.

She’s worried about the insurance coverage, musing, “No one ever thinks there’s going to be a fire.” Especially right after a flood.

Downing is keeping her spirits up, partly because there’s no choice.

“I think [the firefighters] did everything they could to protect my business,” she said. And in the aftermath, “the people who’ve suffered losses have been very concerned with supporting each other.”

In the short term, Downing frets that some of her repeat customers--the husbands and boyfriends who come in every year for Christmas gifts--will go elsewhere because of the fire. Yet she’s not giving up and is contacting suppliers to ship her more goods.

“Our battle plan is day-to-day. We’re going to open up as soon as possible and have the store looking better than ever.”

John Campbell

No need to worry about insurance coverage over this way, since John Campbell, 48, is an agent and broker who has spent nearly all of his 23-year career in this old building running the John L. Campbell Insurance Agency Inc., on one of the main streets running through the breezy downtown.

His commercial files are “burned up to ash,” but he’s discovered there are genuine advantages to the computer age: his wife put most of his data on disks that they kept at home. “We’re fairly operational,” Campbell said.

Unlike retailers with goods to sell, this Laguna homeboy deals in a service and doesn’t have to cull through dismal piles of crisped or waterlogged merchandise, profits that won’t be realized, not this year at least.

At the moment, he’s anxious to be reunited with some cherished personal items, a medallion and certificates and the crystal gavel awarded for his service as Rotary Club president, the modest symbols that connect people with their own history.

Every situation has a bright side and Campbell’s is a case in point. Some of his clients won’t have far to go to find him. They’re in the same building. “I’ve got about six or seven claims going simultaneously, plus my own.”

And for store owners and homeowners alike, he has a bit of unsurprising wisdom: “Make sure you have good insurance and a qualified agent.”

Eric John

Grueling hours and chronic worry about the market are usually the norm for owners of a small business. But there’s also the satisfying feeling of being your own boss and making your own success.

Some, like Eric John, even learn balance and circumspection amid tragedy and reversal. The surf shop owner has endured it all, and as he walks slowly through the darkened Quiksilver Boardriders Club, past the ruined beach wear, he sums it up like this--”It’s only stuff. What if a firefighter got killed?”

He has an economic safety net because he owns or co-owns other stores. Even so, this fire is a bit much. “I’ve been in business here 15 years,” said John, 39. “We’ve been through it all.”

The firestorm of 1993 bypassed the commercial core and ravaged residential areas. That doesn’t mean merchants were unscathed.

“When the town shuts down, everybody suffers economically,” he said.

He and partner Randy Hunt, a former investment banker, were expecting a robust season, the payoff for the $100,000 shop renovation six months ago. Instead, they got hammered.

“One of the defining characteristics of being an entrepreneur is you’re at risk,” John said.

The dismal visage of his destroyed labor doesn’t crush John’s spirit. “Look around,” he said, eyes scanning the busy downtown and the ocean nearby. “It’s nice out here. To portray this place as getting wiped out every two years is wrong. I’ve never seen any business go down that hasn’t skidded back.”

Kimberly Salter

Until now, Kimberly Salter’s experience in dealing with crisis involved counseling others.

This time, the 44-year-old psychologist is her own patient.

“It’s ironic,” she said. “We do critical-incident stress work and crisis management, but we’re not used to being on this side of it. The neat thing about being in Laguna is it’s such a small-town community and there’s so much support and caring.”

She and colleague Santiago Estrada, 53, had no insurance, and like others in the burned building are still tallying the damage. They lost a computer, files, books, family photos and copies of their diplomas and licenses.

After 15 years at one place, will they ever fully recover?

“Of course!” Salter said. “What kind of psychologist would I be if I couldn’t survive this?”

Horst and Arianna Noppenberger

A computer saved the day for insurance agent Campbell, but it may not have rescued the Noppenberger husband and wife team. Horst is an architect and Arianna is an interior designer, in business here for 4 1/2 years.

It’s bad enough that water damage from firefighting efforts saturated Horst’s intricate drawings. But their computers also got drenched, and the couple are trying to find out how much information on ideas and concepts, plus payroll data for their four employees, was lost.

“We were surprised that firefighters didn’t cover them. That’s disappointing to us,” Arianna said. “The computers had everything.”

That’s not their only problem. The Noppenbergers also are uninsured and at this point they have no idea how much it’ll cost to get their business up and running.

Friends are helping, and they have already found a new place to set up shop.

Susan Schieber

Her Web site says Sue Marie’s Day Spa specializes in facial scrubs “with ground apricot and walnut shells.”

For the top price of $130, “warm honey and soy milk are gently poured onto your face while warm oils are massaged into your scalp, hands and feet.”

Fire investigators initially suspected the blaze started with a waxing pot left on.

“I was feeling guilty, but we’ve since found out it was an electrical fire,” said a relieved Susan Schieber.

That’s some consolation, but not much.

Business was booming and she was looking to expand. Now Schieber and eight to 10 full- and part-time employees are searching for a new location.

“We will be somewhere by Dec. 1,” she said. “The building may be gone, but our business is in our hands and we are still together.”

She is insured but fears her coverage will not fully reimburse her for the ruined decor. “I just put in $5,000 of the most exquisite leopard pattern carpet, for my Egyptian motif, and there were other items,” she said.

Like the others who share the building, Schieber believes that time, with a little boost from determination, will mend the loss.

“The mourning’s over. We must move on.”

Mark Chamberlain

After a quarter century in his beloved studio, Mark Chamberlain, 56, wasn’t going to flee the flames without at least a token fight.

He was in B.C. Space Gallery when the fire broke out at 7:30 a.m., but before running to safety, he tarried long enough to cover his enlargers and other valuable equipment with plastic to protect them from smoke or firefighters’ hoses.

It worked, but afterward a panicked Chamberlain was nervously rooting through his cabinets, which contain far more than a photographer’s tools of the trade. Here, in the studio so dense with fire stink that he is wearing a mask, he is anxiously searching for nearly 40 years of photographic history of Laguna. The photos represent the heart of his work and captured the life of the community.

He discovers to his joy the treasured photos are smelly but otherwise unharmed.

Many are photos of Laguna Canyon Road, part of an ambitious mural that he and fellow photographer Jerry Burchfield began working on in 1980.

“We targeted the Laguna Canyon Road as symbolic for the future of Laguna and metaphorically for mankind,” Chamberlain said. “We felt that how we treated that road was going to be symbolic of how we treated a lot of things.”

They documented the road at thousands of angles and in 1989 constructed a 636-foot-long photographic mural that later became the area’s environmental focal point to help save Laguna Canyon from the controversial toll road project that ended up being built.

The mural was later taken down and stored in Canyon Acres, where it was destroyed in the 1993 fire.

The studio itself can be repaired, as can the water-warped hardwood floor and the hole in the roof that firefighters punched to keep the fire from spreading. And there are the cameras that will need cleaning.

But his work, his photos, thankfully came through.

“I’m so glad that everything was intact and my negatives and photographs weren’t ruined,” he said. “I literally had assembled a photographic history not only of Laguna Beach, but after being a photographer for over 30 years, I had a history of Orange County too.”

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Burned

Several Laguna Beach businesses were scorched by a fire Monday that caused an estimated $4.5 million in damage. Most suffered extensive smoke and water damage and some lost merchandise.

Sue Marie’s Day Spa

Owner: Susan Schieber

Address: 247 Forest Ave.

Business: Spa specializing in facials and massages

Damage: Severe

Years in location: Three

****

Santiago Estrada and Kimberly Salter

Address: 247 Forest Ave.

Business: Psychologists

Damage: Severe

Years in location: 15

****

B.C. Space Gallery

Owner: Mark Chamberlain

Address: 235 Forest Ave.

Business: Photographer

Damage: Moderate water damage, smoke damage to floor and contents

Years in location: 25

****

Horst Architect

Owners: Horst and Arianna Noppenberger

Address: 241 Forest Ave.

Business: Commercial/residential architecture

Damage: Severe water and smoke

Years in location: Five

****

Laura Downing

Owner: Laura Downing

Address: 241 Forest Ave.

Business: Women’s apparel and specialty

Damage: Being assessed

Years in location: Nine

****

Quiksilver Boardriders Club

Owners: Randal Hunt and Eric John

Address: 255 Forest Ave.

Business: Surf wear

Damage: Water and smoke

Years in location: Five

****

John Campbell Insurance

Owners: John and Lu Campbell

Address: 249 Forest Ave.

Business: Insurance sales

Damage: Severe, but client files saved

Years in location: 22

Source: Times reports