Empty storefronts in the SCV

By Jim Holt

BOO!

If not, you might be soon.
The SCV Independent has learned that forces are at work locally turning more than six percent of all storefronts into ghost town facades - double what it was a decade ago.

An informal survey of more than a dozen local strip malls revealed this past weekend that every mall has at least one empty storefront, with more than half them exhibiting at least two storefronts that once housed actual stores.

"The retail vacancy rates in Santa Clarita in 2000 and 2001 was about three and-a-half percent which is very very low," said John Cserkuti, senior vice-president of NAI Global in Valencia.

"Now those vacancy rates have doubled to about 6.5 per cent."

And, while Santa Clarita Valley is far from becoming a ghost town, the ominous wave of recently shuttered storefronts is scaring local commercial realtors.
"We don't have a lot of tenants looking right now," Cserkuti said. "A lot have filed for bankruptcy."

On Lyons Avenue at Peachland Avenue, a ‘For Lease' sign hangs where superheroes once fought the forces of evil on the covers of displayed comic books.
Four years ago, the Brave New Work Comics store moved to a bigger space down the road near Newhall Avenue.

The realtor is still trying to fill the vacuum and find tenants for two storefronts at the tiny strip mall but sees a worrisome trend in retail.

"Yesterday, I got an email, I can't tell you from who but it was from a national franchise saying they had stopped all expansion into the Antelope Valley," said Carter Crouch, managing director and vice-president of Centers Realty Inc.

"The exact words from the Southern California head of the franchise was ‘we're done expanding into Antelope Valley'."

Crouch would only reveal that the franchiser is a national retailer.

One of the main stumbling blocks for local realtors specializing in leasing commercial sites is that landlord and buyer "cannot come to a meeting of the minds."

"The landlords expect a price that is unrealistic and buyers are still unrealistic as well," he said. "When Santa Clarita - Valencia and Newhall - expanded there was extreme development in 12 to 15 years. We don't need seven grocery stores in a two-block radius.

"There's not enough business to sustain that amount of retail in the area." Crouch said he's prepared to drop his rent by half to about $1.75 per square foot "just to get the traffic through here."

Many of his neighbors up and down Lyons are now just memories of a more prosperous time.

At Valencia Plaza, on Lyons near Interstate 5, a single page was posted in the window of what was once a soccer goods store, informing patrons that the store closed "due to personal reasons".

Two doors down from it, only a ‘For Rent' sign is posted -no reason.

Both stores direct interested parties to call the same commercial realtor at an 818-phone number.
At the very next strip mall on Lyons, more empty storefronts, more signs directing traffic to two other realtors.

A banner is hung over a Century 21 office, next to the 99 cent store, promoting a fire sale of sorts: "Foreclosure HUD Properties. Free List."

Century 21 broker Barbara Thomson is the person you get when you call the number posted in the window.
"The commercial sector kind of followed the residential sector in this economic crunch," she says. "It's pretty much following suit.

"A lot of people are losing their jobs so we're not having the business we had before ... I don't see that just coming to an end. The residential sector in Santa Clarita is pretty close to the bottom. It's kind of turning around (meaning) it's not in a free fall anymore.
"But, for the commercial sector, we're still going through it, we're still being hurt."

Across from the 99 Cent store, on Lyon's at Wiley Canyon Road, a banner draped across the Realty Executives office sums up the valley-wide phenomenon: "Foreclosure Center"
The trend of vanishing retailers is undeniable, Thomson says, pointing to big spaces vacated by big retailers - case in point, she says, Mervyns formerly on Magic Mountain Parkway.

Across the street from what used to be Mervyns, near the mall, is the gigantic southwest corner lot near Souplantation & Sweet Tomatos restaurant that has hosted a number of restaurants - French cuisine once, a Vegas-style brunch setup once and a sports bar.
"It's always empty," said one gray-haired shopper outside the former restaurant site.

"No one seem so keep it going," she said.
All that remains at the site is the charred cooking fuel inside a display oven.
Peeking through the glass reveals an eerie empty arena inside.

The strip mall on the east side of Mervyns has its own boarded-up storefront - another sign, another phone number for another realtor somewhere in San Fernando Valley.

The sign posted in Mervyns itself is for a 310 area-code realtor based in Los Angeles.
The bigger storefronts are creating bigger problem for realtors.

Cinema Center, on Valencia Boulevard at Cinema Drive, is home to about half a dozen businesses.
One of them - Box Brothers - boxed up its possessions and moved elsewhere.

Between Box Brothers and what used to be La Paris Bakery & Café (now vacated), tucked in the elbow of the tiny strip mall, is a 4,000 square foot hole.
For close to 10 years it was the home of The Picture Show custom framing shop.

Stains remain from where the marquee lettering was removed. You can still read the name in the shadows.
For Picture Show owner and certified picture framer Gene Ausili, the store became too big for his needs. So he packed up his hundreds of custom frames and moved two doors down to a smaller shop.

"This is far more economical," he said, happy to still be doing business in the same place just two doors down.
For other retailers, big spaces mean big headaches.
For years, Blockbuster Video occupied one of the biggest storefronts at Granary Square on McBean Parkway. That was then. Now a sign posted at the entrance to the strip mall directs visitors to visit a realtor's Web site.

Size matters when it comes to filling storefronts.
In the windows of four vacant stores along the Del Rio retail strip that stretches from Chi Chi's Pizza, along Soledad Canyon Road, the realtor has posted tire-sized signs promoting the available footage: 1340 square feet, 3640 square feet, 1830, 1490 - all empty.

The empty storefronts face two other vast empty storefronts across Soledad at the Crossroads Center - one cluttered with work tools and jumbo-sized fast food drink cups and the other promising the arrival soon of a Halloween store.
Scared yet?

Since October, at least 43 bankruptcies were filed in the central downtown core of Santa Clarita (in and around Magic Mountain Parkway and McBean Parkway with a zip code of 91355), according to realtors compiling data for www.foreclosure.com.

The latest vacancy to hit the prominent Promenade is Dickey's Barbeque Pit.

On July 21, a legal notice was posted on the Dickey's door ordering the restaurant business to pay more than $10,000 in rent or vacate the premises.

Two doors down from Dickey's is another empty storefront recently vacated by The Vitamin Barn, which, according to their sign, has moved across the street near Target.

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