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Mailbag: Landlord should reduce stationery store’s rent

Newport Stationers, which cannot absorb a rent increase, is closing after 55 years in business.
(Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer)
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Re “Newport Stationers is on the way out after 55 years,” (Jan. 10): I am writing to you with the hope that publishing this letter might help put pressure on the Irvine Co. to save Newport Stationers, one of the oldest, core small businesses here in Corona del Mar.

Located next to Gelson’s, they have for several generations provided us and our children with school and business supplies, wedding and bar mitzvah invitations, greeting cards and small holiday gifts. I have been told that the Irvine Co. significantly raised their rent, essentially forcing them out of business.

The store has been there for 55 years. Stationery is obviously not a high-margin enterprise, so it is not a surprise that they can’t handle this increase in rent. In our 21st-century economy, I didn’t expect them to survive forever, but it is shocking to see this old business go down so suddenly.

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If the business is just not viable, then maybe it can’t be saved. But if it is truly a rent increase that is shutting them down, I would ask that the Irvine Co. instead work with Newport Stationers to keep this old business, which our community values, up and running.

Russell Klein
Corona del Mar

Homeless series reveals city’s priorities

Thank you so much for the Daily Pilot’s coverage of our homeless. Huntington Beach is a facade, the most corrupt, greedy, pathetic place I’ve lived. They find money for superfluous and self-gratifying projects that have caused traffic gridlock, air and noise-polluted events.

Did we really need a 38,000-square-foot senior center, chopping up empty space in a bird-breeding area and more baseball fields when we do nothing for our homeless humans and animals? I’m ashamed of this city.

Lynn Copeland
Huntington Beach

Remember to march for women in O.C.

I woke up on the morning of Nov. 8, 2016, thinking we were electing our first female president. I went to bed — bleary-eyed and with my pantsuit rumpled — realizing we had elected an unrepentant misogynist instead.

Like so many women, I was distraught. What did this say about our country and our system of values? What did this mean for women and for a woman’s right to choose?

But we didn’t just get sad, we didn’t just get mad.

We got busy.

On Jan. 21, 2017, one day after Trump’s inauguration, millions of women and enlightened men came together around the globe for the Women’s March. We turned our anger into action. We turned our outrage into a movement for real and lasting change. We turned an off-color brag about grabbing women’s private parts into an iconic pink knit hat.

In the days, weeks and months to come, we became activists, organizers, candidates. In 2018, we became newly elected officials in record numbers at the local, state and federal level.

It’s now 2020 and still we march. Because this day — the Women’s March — cements our belief in the power of sisterhood. This march fortifies us for the hard work ahead.

Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris
Laguna Beach

How to get published: Email us at john.canalis@latimes.com. All correspondence must include full name, hometown and phone number (for verification purposes). The Pilot reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity and length.

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