Shunning Potential Steppingstone to Success
When Brentwood resident Deena Sotto agreed to accompany her friend to the Sun Valley showroom of Walker Zanger, a high-end distributor of marble, granite and other natural-stone products, she was certain that her friend was confused about the address.
“I would have thought that this type of showroom would have been with the more expensive real estate, like on Melrose,” said Sotto during a recent shopping trip. “But this is really nice, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s more than a stone’s throw from Brentwood, Bel-Air and the Hollywood Hills to Sun Valley. But according to retailers who service well-heeled clients from those tony digs, more than a few customers seeking imported travertine, slate and other earthly treasures are making the trek.
Karen A. Murphy, showroom manager of Walker Zanger, recalls that the sultan of Brunei recently sent an entourage to the Sun Valley showroom seeking materials to line swimming pool number umpty-five in one of his many mansions. The tab for materials alone: $150,000. Here, the product alone for a “nice” limestone kitchen floor could cost $4,000.
Well-known among interior designers and architects, the more than three dozen stone merchants in Sun Valley, and a like number in neighboring North Hollywood, form a virtual “stone corridor” that is drawing in cash-bearing customers that might otherwise never set foot on the somewhat dusty streets of this beleaguered community.
To the masses, the community may be better-known for its collection of landfills and auto salvage yards.
Business leaders hope to change that rough-hewn image, and are taken aback when one mentions “trash” and Sun Valley in the same sentence. Yet the head of the community’s Chamber of Commerce was reluctant to openly promote the region’s unofficial “stone capital” title for fear of offending non-stone businesses.
This may be a case in which, as they say, you’ve got to use what you’ve got to get what you want. And in this case, they’ve got stone.
“I’ve never read anything that said ‘Come to Sun Valley and see the stone,’ but I think that would be a good idea for them,” said Christopher Grubb, founder of Arch-Interiors Design Group Inc. in West Hollywood who often visits the dealers in the two north Valley communities. “You go out there looking for one [dealer] and then you see there’s another and another and another. And then you start to realize, wow, everybody’s clustered here.
“I think you could say, and be pretty secure in saying, it could be called the ‘stone center’ of L.A. Eventually, for contractors and designers, all roads lead there.”
Angel Montalvan, president of the Sun Valley Area Chamber of Commerce, concedes that he’d love to see the community known for more than gravel pits and trash.
“Unfortunately, given the history of Sun Valley 30 years ago, the businesses that were here were gravel pits,” said Montalvan, who lives in North Hollywood and has been president of the chamber for two years. “So people think of Sun Valley as a lot of gravel pits.”
So why not join forces with the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber and promote the “stone corridor”?
Montalvan and other longtime business leaders were hard-pressed to think of what else might draw Cher, Denzel and other high rollers to Sun Valley.
But Montalvan said the chamber does not want to promote one industry over another for fear of being accused of favoritism.
“We have to be fair to all of our members,” he said. “If we do it for one industry, we’d have to do it for all.”
That theory has never stopped anyone from promoting L.A.’s ties to the entertainment industry, but OK, if you say so.
With or without a booster campaign from the area’s business infrastructure, Sun Valley’s rock group is becoming more popular. Both the number of merchants in the area and their sales are growing, thanks in part to the economy-inspired boom in construction and remodeling.
“This is not only the stone capital of L.A., it’s the stone capital of the western United States,” said Lou Branchev, owner of L.I. Modern Marble Inc., a fixture in Sun Valley for the past 12 years. “I’d say that more than half of the stone that gets distributed in the western U.S. goes through the Sun Valley, North Hollywood area.”
Branchev said that over the years, stone dealers (he estimates there are hundreds in the two communities) have been drawn to the area by zoning that allows for warehousing and stonecutting; access to the labor force, and proximity to two of the biggest names in the business, Globe Marble, now closed, and Walker Zanger.
Initially, said Walker Zanger’s Murphy, most of the company’s clientele consisted of the usual suspects: celebrities, and residents with enviable addresses like Bel-Air and Palos Verdes. Now, she said, with the economy booming, the shop, with its 1,500-square-foot showroom, draws from the San Gabriel and Santa Clarita valleys as well as the surrounding San Fernando Valley.
The showroom, situated across the street from a cement factory and down the block from Waste Management, is hardly in the high-rent district. That fact--the availability of plenty of low-cost land--is what drew the company to the location in 1988, when it outgrew its Glendale digs, according to Mike Bastone, vice president of tile sales for Walker Zanger. Up until last month, the company’s headquarters was also at the Sun Valley site. (Having outgrown that site, it has since moved many of the corporate functions to Sylmar).
Now, although junker cars headed for salvage yards may abound nearby, within the neatly coiffed grounds of Walker Zanger, BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedeses reign. “We have clientele that, when they’re on the street, they’re afraid they’ve come to the wrong place,” said Murphy. “When they get inside, whatever fear or anxiety they have is all removed.”
Murphy is well aware of the image of the surrounding community.
When she talks to potential clients on the phone “I always say we’re next to Burbank. It calms them.”
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Valley@Work runs each Tuesday. Karen Robinson-Jacobs can be reached at Karen.Robinson@latimes.com.
