Long Beach Mall Finds Its Niche, but Can’t Find a Way to Survive

The Long Beach Plaza Mall, a symbol of redevelopment plans that went awry, is in foreclosure and ready to close by mid-July after years of money-losing operations.

But a funny thing happened on the way to its rendezvous with a wrecking ball.

The plaza became a unique hybrid, part shopping mall, part job center, a meeting place for groups as disparate as Alcoholics Anonymous and World War II veterans from the Philippine Islands.

Sprawling over a six-square-block area of downtown Long Beach, the enclosed mall truly is what some other malls advertise themselves to be--”a crossroads of the world.”

Well-known mall retailers like Foot Locker, Miller’s Outpost and Radio Shack occupy space alongside entrepreneurs from all over the globe.

The merchants were attracted by the mall’s low rents and proximity to the densely packed immigrant neighborhoods near downtown Long Beach.

Two blocks north of the mall, at International Elementary School, the ethnic and racial makeup of the 791 students breaks down like this: 62% Latino, 22% African American, 7% Asian, 5% white, with the rest of the student population representing Native Americans and families from the Philippines and Pacific Island countries.

Within the mall, store owners and shoppers reflect a similar diversity.

Charles Paik, owner of Angel’s Pretzels, is from South Korea.

Alcibu Jimoh is a Nigerian who owns the African American Gift Shop, where you can buy a black Jesus or a framed Bob Marley poster and listen to piped-in reggae music.

David King and his wife, Karen, who serve up fried fish and rice and other dishes at a food court, are from Taiwan.

Victor Eljrely, who dishes out nachos, enchiladas and other plate lunches from his Del Mar Mexican Food restaurant, also in the food court, is a French-speaking native of Morocco.

Co Duong and his wife, Tina, run Anthony Jewelers. They said they came from Vietnam 14 years ago “empty-handed.” Now, like other merchants, the Duongs have hung “Going out of business” signs in their store.

Adding to the uniqueness of the mall, and reflecting its strategic importance to low-income residents of downtown, is a Job Start Center in one storefront, where unemployed youths can sign up for job training. A floor below is the city’s Neighborhood Resource Center, which dispenses information in English, Spanish and Khmer, the native language of Cambodia, on such things as bus schedules and services for battered children.

The problem is that while the mall draws customers from apartment houses, homes and transient hotels in the high-density neighborhoods to the north, customers have never come in large enough numbers or brought fat enough wallets to make the mall financially successful.

The mall, the result of collaboration between the city and developer Ernest Hahn, was built in 1982 and was a failure almost from the start. A huge, two-story enclosed concrete edifice, it is dark, foreboding and uninviting to shoppers.

Through a succession of owners and business failures by key tenants, such as Buffum’s department store, the mall has been in steady decline and in foreclosure for the last three years.

What is an important community resource to one segment of downtown Long Beach’s population, became anathema and an embarrassment to others in the downtown area, a place to be avoided.

Just blocks to the south, a district of pricey restaurants on Pine Avenue caters to the residents of expensive high-rise condos on Ocean Boulevard, tourists and conventioneers.

Don Darnauer, president of the West End Community Assn., said his organization surveyed 1,000 local homeowners and found few defenders of the mall.

“Nobody is happy with the way it is,” he said. “We want a more upgraded mall.”

Darnauer, who lives in a condo within walking distance of the mall, is eagerly awaiting plans from the developer, the Hopkins Real Estate Group of Newport Beach.

One concern is that Hopkins may be thinking of an open-air, suburban-type mall, which he said might be a mistake because of the proximity of downtown Long Beach to the foul air created by Terminal Island coal yards and oil refineries in Wilmington.

“Suburban malls don’t get nearly the industrial soot that we get,” Darnauer said.

Stephen Hopkins, president of the Orange County development firm, this week gave mall store owners until July 15 to vacate.

“We expect demolition to begin following the closure of the mall,” he said in a written statement, but gave no indication of what sort of replacement his firm is considering.

“We are working on something to make this a better place to do business,” John Loper, a senior project manager for Hopkins, told a standing-room-only audience of mall store owners, local residents and government leaders who met at the mall’s community meeting room Thursday night. “We are still in a very preliminary planning stage.”

Younis Bayat, a native of South Africa who owns the 99 Cents and More store, said he and other business owners are seeking legal advice and hope to fight the 30-day notice telling them to vacate the mall. They would like an extension of at least 90 days, Bayat said.

“Logistically, 30 days is impossible,” Bayat said. “If we were all to leave on the 14th, the loading bays would be full. We’d all be at each other’s throats.”

Dishing out an Italian blue raspberry ice to a Latino family at Angel’s Pretzels last week, Paik lamented the mall’s demise.

“I am not making a lot of money, but business is OK,” Paik said. “We knew the mall would close down someday. We didn’t know when, but knew it was only a matter of time. But we didn’t expect to be give just one month’s notice--told to just get out.”