Deal Melts Ice Cream Shop’s Future
For 23 years, Ken’s Ice Cream has hummed with the whir of blenders, the clink of scoops and the chatter of customers lining up for the famously outsized servings of French vanilla and pecan praline, dished up by owner Wanda Johnson-Pope.
These days, the little ice cream parlor, tucked into a Carson strip mall near Cal State Dominguez Hills, is abuzz with the news that Johnson-Pope, a widow of 64, and the business she named after her then-teenage son, are facing eviction.
And her neighbors -- proprietors of the many small, black-owned businesses in the Carson Plaza -- fear they may one day share the plight of Johnson-Pope, who is being turned out to please a big-name competitor, a Baskin-Robbins, that recently opened in the same mini-mall.
“I could understand if I didn’t pay the rent or did things the landlord didn’t want me to do,” Johnson-Pope said Friday about the strip mall management company’s refusal to renew her lease on the tidy little shop.
“But this? It’s scary when you work all this time and you do well, to think they can just take it all away like this.”
Johnson-Pope said Summit Team, the company that manages the strip mall for property owner Crown Life Insurance, put her off for several months, beginning in July, as she began the familiar process of renewing her soon-to-expire lease. In December, she got a notice that she must be out in 30 days.
The letter notifying Johnson-Pope that her lease would not be renewed gave no reason, but she said a Summit Team representative, Michael Israelsky, told her that the firm had signed a lease with a new Baskin-Robbins franchise that included a “no-competitors” clause.
Israelsky could not be reached for comment Friday. The manager of the new Baskin-Robbins referred questions to Summit Team.
Many of the strip mall’s longtime local merchants -- the owners of such places as the Dugout Barber Shop and the House of Elegance Beauty Salon and Supply -- blame the new city-promoted sports complex under construction up the street, which will be home to the Galaxy soccer team. They say landlords want to attract national chains familiar to stadium- goers.
“The city promised us the stadium would help the small businesses here, but it turns out Wanda is the first casualty,” said Ardis Jackson Jr., who owns a Postal Annex franchise in the strip mall.
Several Carson officials, including Mayor Daryl Sweeney and Councilman Jim Dear, wrote letters to Summit Team, urging that Ken’s be allowed to stay, as did the local branch of the NAACP. And state Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson) called the company. Neighboring store owners and Johnson-Pope’s longtime customers held a rally that drew 150 people. All to no avail.
“It did really make me feel good, though, to have all these people helping me,” Johnson-Pope said. “I’m not giving up.”
On Friday, she was in court to challenge the eviction notice, a move that she figures will give her at least another month.
Today, supporters are planning another rally, at 1 p.m. in the parking lot outside Ken’s, and in full view of the Baskin-Robbins store.
Between her oversized portions and the ice cream she donates to local schools each year, Johnson-Pope acknowledged that her profits are smaller than they could be.
“I don’t make a lot of money,” she said, letting her eyes roll over the freezers displaying 25 flavors as she whipped up a float for a waiting customer. “But this place is more than the money to me.”
