Canoga Park Gives Its Row’s Image a Little Refinishing

This community’s “antique row” on Sherman Way between Canoga and Owensmouth avenues is trying hard to shake its image as the Valley’s down-market place to buy collectibles.

Rows of newly planted trees line both sides of the street, interspersed with freshly painted old-style street lamps featuring stenciled iron designs with antique themes.

Less obvious to infrequent shoppers, the city of Los Angeles also has installed a new traffic light at Remmet Avenue to make the strip more pedestrian friendly, and a grant program to improve local storefronts has resulted in a row of pastel-colored shop facades on the south side of Sherman Way.

In May, a majority of the area’s 266 property owners approved the formation of a business improvement district, voting to tax themselves about $230,000 annually and spend the money on local improvements such as security guards and districtwide marketing programs.

Still, pedestrian traffic in this area of 20 to 30 antiques stores was noticeably scant--both in the shops and on the streets--on a recent weekday.

Most of the shops are small and run by one or more vendors, and the windows of many are filled with the pleasant clutter one would expect to find in a grandmother’s attic.

Asked about the district, antiques experts at most major Los Angeles auction houses were largely unfamiliar with the row. That’s probably not surprising, given that merchandise at most of the shops tends to be small and often knickknacky, with few items costing more than $1,000.

Near Alabama Avenue, the display windows at Angel Heart contain a collection of fresh flowers and lace, angel figurines and a vintage bridal gown. Farther down Sherman Way near the other end of the row is Old Friends, one of the district’s oldest establishments, which specializes in wood Mission-style furniture and draws clients from as far away as Santa Barbara and San Diego.

And at the west end of the row near Remmet is the district’s biggest tenant, Affordable Antiques, an open-air two-story shop filled with everyday items such as beer steins, pipe racks, metal tools, swords and landscape oil paintings, all bathed in a weak wash of fluorescent light.

The district itself dates back about three decades and has developed a reputation as a diverse shopping area where bargains can be found, according to the people who work and shop in the area. The heart of the district is along Sherman Way between Canoga and Owensmouth, although there are several other antiques stores in the surrounding blocks nearby.

“Each shop tends to set its own theme,” said Ron Clary, a past president of the Canoga Park/West Hills Chamber of Commerce. “We had one place, for example, that was largely British-oriented, though it’s no longer there. Then there are one or two stores that specialize in certain things. One does wood refinishing. But others come and go. There is turnover. It’s like any other business.”

Most merchants and people who come to the area on a regular basis agree that the row, while hardly booming, has rebounded significantly since the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Many store owners were hit twice by the temblor centered just a few miles away. First, much of their merchandise fell and broke in the quake. Then later, many of the area’s unreinforced buildings were red-tagged and had to be torn down.

“I lost everything--probably 90% of my stock,” recalled Alan Beutler, owner of Old Friends and an antique district resident of 25 years. “My building was red-tagged. The neighborhood looked like Kosovo” after the earthquake.

Beutler says nearly all stores’ merchandise--including his--was uninsured at the time because most insurers refuse to cover contents of unreinforced buildings.

He estimates his losses at about $100,000 but says the figure was probably relatively high compared with other merchants because he also owned his building. Still, even moderate losses can be devastating for many antiques dealers, who often operate at the margins of profitability.

Indeed, the number of area antiques shops dropped dramatically in the early 1990s, says Leslie Lambert, a project manager who oversees improvements in downtown Canoga Park for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.

“Before the earthquake there were 30 to 35 antique stores on Sherman Way,” she said. “Then the recession started to hit, and the earthquake was the final straw. When we came in December 1994, there were eight shops left.”

But the same temblor that devastated the area is now also helping fuel its comeback, as many of the dollars being spent on recent improvements have come through programs specifically designed for earthquake relief, says City Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose district includes Canoga Park.

“There’s lots of things going on,” Chick said. “Much of it has come out of a terrible thing, which is the earthquake. That earthquake provided us with the opportunity to access outside dollars--federal money that had never been available before.

“It’s all happened in the last couple of years in terms of coming to fruition. But it’s been the last four to five years that the endeavors have been underway, starting with the planning, then bringing projects to fruition.”

Still, Chick acknowledges that moves to make the area more attractive and pedestrian friendly can only go so far in drawing foot traffic and shoppers.

“That’s a citywide struggle--to get Los Angelenos out of their cars, out of air-conditioned shopping malls and back onto our local shopping streets, browsing in and out of retail stores,” she said.

Meanwhile, the return of a critical mass of shops appears to be gaining the attention of at least some antiques enthusiasts as well as other merchants who have set up stores on the row.

Affordable Antiques owner Aram Kartalian says he used to have a store on Topanga Boulevard, but closed it and consolidated into his 2-year-old shop on Antique Row because business was better there.

“The bottom line is, I get more serious buyers and collectors being on Antique Row here,” he said. “I couldn’t make a living on just our neighbors. [In the new location] I get them from all over the Valley.”

One of his buyers, Janice Johnson, co-owner of the Sherman Oaks Antiques Mall, says she makes the trek to Antique Row about twice a year.

“I tend to browse,” she said. “In the Valley, it’s really the only true antique area. It’s the only outdoor walking district where the shop owners are.”