With a Hollywood shutdown appearing increasingly likely, a number of local businesses are already bracing for the fallout.

Sellers of big-ticket products, like cars and houses, are reporting a slowdown in activity. And other businesses that service the entertainment industry, like restaurants and caterers, are developing contingency plans.

“There are two areas of impact,” said Cheryl Rhoden, assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, one of three Hollywood unions negotiating new contracts. “One area is within the industry the various suppliers who supply the productions. But that picks up after a strike; it’s merely a rearrangement of timing.”

The second, and more vulnerable, area, according to Rhoden, includes “those who work in the neighborhood from the dentist to the dry cleaners. They don’t recover as quickly.”

And just as certain sectors of the economy are likely to be hit sooner, so too would certain geographic areas where high concentrations of entertainment industry workers live and work Hollywood, Burbank, West Hollywood, Culver City and Beverly Hills, to name a few.

“The ports of Long Beach won’t notice, the San Gabriel tech firms won’t notice,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Economic Development Corp. Nonetheless, the economic consequences of a protracted Hollywood shutdown would indeed be considerable.

According to the EDC, the direct impact of concurrent strikes by the WGA West, the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists would be $250 million a week. But when taking into account the effect that lost wages and spending would have on the greater economy meals not eaten out, homes not purchased, offices not leased the estimate rises to as much as $457 million per week.

Just the threat of such an event appears to already be putting a chill on spending.

While the causes behind the recent slowdown in home and new-car sales can’t be cited with certainty, there is much to suggest that writers and actors are starting to rein-in their spending on big-ticket items as they brace for what could be an extended period of inactivity.

“It’s kind of scary,” said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist at the California Association of Realtors, of the prospect of a lengthy job action. “I’m not sure how much strategic planning is being done (by businesses that could be affected).”

Housing industry impacts

As for residential agents, many are not looking past January, when the market traditionally picks up from the annual holiday softening. But signs are surfacing that more than the normal seasonal slowdown may be afoot.

“From a global perspective, we are seeing a bit of a change in the overall real estate market,” Appleton-Young said, “though it’s hard to isolate specific factors.”

Ann Carlton Bose, an independent mortgage broker at Estate Funding Inc. of Woodland Hills, is among those who are not wasting any time adapting to the situation.

“We’re figuring that we’ve seen a slowdown of about one-third of our gross production over the last two months,” said Bose, who claims that about a third of her business comes from the entertainment sector from set painters to truck drivers to costume designers. “They are gearing up (for a strike) and aren’t making major purchases like cars or homes.”

In response, Bose is aggressively marketing to her non-Hollywood customer base and increasing the frequency of her contacts with the brokerage community, hoping to generate more referral sources to compensate for what she sees as fewer buyers in the market.

Among those in the entertainment industry who are bracing themselves is screenwriter Mark Mullin, 36. “We’ve planned no major trips, no major expenditures,” he said. “We bought a house recently and we’re holding off on any major renovations.”

The 10,700-member WGA itself is establishing mechanisms for what might be an extended strike, setting up a $7 million war chest as a strike fund for members, 80 percent of whom are WGA West members.

During the last WGA strike, in 1988, the $3 million strike fund, a pool from which members can draw interest-free loans, was completely depleted.

That strike lasted 22 weeks and was widely seen as the cause of a number of restaurant closings and the shuttering a number of businesses serving but not directly related to the entertainment industry.

Many restaurateurs have not forgotten those days, and they’re closely monitoring developments, even if not yet making strategic plans for a slowdown.

“The (entertainment) industry is the biggest game (for restaurants), certainly in L.A. County,” said Jeff King, chairman of King Seafood Co. and a member of the board of the California Restaurant Association. “There’s got to be some effect. In terms of the hot new restaurants, they’ll feel it. The people who market to the industry will feel it.”

Outlook for Spago

Many pointed to restaurants like Spago Beverly Hills, a high-end holding of the Puck Fine Dining Group, which is frequented by many in the industry, as one eatery that will take a hit.

But Jannis Swermen, Puck’s director of communications, said the restaurant’s place as “a culinary landmark” with a loyal and well-heeled clientele both in and out of the entertainment industry would allow it to ride out any slowdown created by a Hollywood strike.

Other Hollywood-oriented food businesses that aren’t “landmarks” have other ways of coping.

“Our restaurants are mid-priced. It’s a concept developed to withstand that change in the economy,” said Selwyn Yosslowitz, a co-owner of the chain of Santa Monica-based Marmalade Cafes, which also depends heavily on Hollywood clientele.

Nonetheless, Yosslowitz is preparing to move staff from the catering side of his business into his restaurants, if a strike breaks out. There’s little, he acknowledged, he can do to be proactive.

Some business owners are looking to alter the focus of their marketing efforts, in the event of a protracted strike.

King, whose company owns 12 restaurants from Long Beach to Calabasas, including two in Santa Monica, said, “You just try and suck it up and try to market to the people you do have, like tourists.”

Timing of actions

The first strike, if it occurs, will come in May, when the contract between WGA and film and television producers expires. That would be followed closely by SAG and AFTRA, whose contracts expire in early July.

If the region is hit by the three-barrel strike and the weekly impact comes close to the EDC projections, a seven-week strike would account for a 10 percent dip in the region’s overall $331 billion economy, wiping out the entertainment sector’s annual contribution.

At that point, said economist Kyser, the industry can expect to see some sort of intervention by both the Mayor’s Office and, potentially, Gov. Gray Davis’ office.

The regional unemployment rate stands at 5.4 percent, and Kyser is projecting that figure could increase to 5.8 percent by the middle of next year if the strikes hit.

But even if the strikes are all averted, union members may feel the impact of actions that reportedly are being taken in anticipation of a possible shutdown.

Hollywood studios may or may not be stockpiling scripts (publicly they won’t say it’s happening and even the WGA’s Rhoden said she hasn’t been able to confirm rumors that has been happening). But writers are pushing to get as many projects as possible delivered and get paid before the end of April.

“It’s a matter of talking with my agent and saying, ‘What can we do to get me work and secure a job before this comes down,'” said one writer. “Right now I’m busy, and I will be right up until the strike.”

But the rush now going on may lead to a dry period for writers once issues are resolved and the rest of the industry goes back to work.

As for Mullin, he’s expecting that there will at least be a flood of rewrite work once labor matters are decided.

“(The movie-making process) really does begin with us (writers); it comforts me when I go to sleep at night,” he said.