Smaller Retailers See Boom As Chains Flock to Pasadena
Spotlight on Monrovia
By CLAUDIA PESCHIUTTA
Staff Reporter
Friday nights are a busy time in Old Town Monrovia. Families, couples and groups of teenagers amble along the sidewalks of quaint Myrtle Avenue, a street filled with small, independent shops and restaurants. Depending on the time of year, a farmers market or the Monrovia Family Festival helps as a drawing card.
Sitting on a bench sipping coffee, local businessman Dave Gayman couldn’t help but notice the line of red taillights on the avenue. “Geez, can you believe it? We’ve got a traffic jam on Myrtle Avenue,” remarks Gayman.
The small tie-up illustrates the forces pushing and pulling the San Gabriel Valley’s other Old Town. Overshadowed by Old Pasadena, its neighbor to the west, merchants in this pedestrian-friendly shopping, restaurant district seem content to be second. Mom and pop establishments, not chain stores, give Old Town Monrovia its character and local businesspeople and city officials want to keep it that way.
“We’re not Old Pasadena and don’t want to be Old Pasadena. We have our own niche,” said Scott Ochoa, Monrovia’s assistant city manager. Any business that comes into Old Town Monrovia “needs to be something that is quaint, that is unique.”
For 20 years Jerry and Joan Brascia had been farther south on Myrtle Avenue, but in 1999 they opened Gold West Supply Co. in Old Town Monrovia. “I should have done it years ago,” Jerry Brascia said. “We feel like we belong to the community.”
Cinemas move in
Efforts to remain quaint and still boost business can conflict, as evidenced by the fight to bring a movie theater to Myrtle. Certain such an addition would bring new economic activity, city officials began courting theater developers in 1996. The following year, Krikorian Premiere Theatres agreed to build a 12-screen, 2,500-seat facility.
The $16-million theater, opened in November 2000, looks like an old-time movie house and has been credited for boosting local sales and attracting new businesses, such as Cafe Opera and Coldstone Creamery.
Myrtle Avenue is the main artery of a business improvement district that was established in the 1960s and later became known as Old Town. Many people consider this the “emotional heart” of Monrovia, a city of nearly 37,000 residents that was incorporated in 1887, making it the fourth-oldest city in L.A. County.
Myrtle suffered a major decline during the mall boom of the 1970s. Concerned about a 40-percent vacancy rate on the avenue, the city began trying to revitalize the area.
Some $2 million was pumped into the area for landscaping and fa & #231;ade rehabilitation. A second overhaul has been under way over the last decade. In March voters will decide on the creation of an assessment district to raise $6.8 million for parking and other physical improvements.
Family Festival
A major catalyst has been the Monrovia Family Festival, which includes a produce market, craft booths and kiddie rides. It grew out of the weekly farmers’ markets started in 1992 as a volunteer effort by local merchants. Gayman, owner of Valley Hardware and Jake’s Roadhouse Restaurant in Old Town, spearheaded the effort and parlayed it into a new business, Family Festival Productions Inc., which manages the event.
“We knew we needed an attraction to get people down here,” Gayman said. It runs 43 weekends a year and brings up to 10,000 people to Myrtle on Friday nights. During the winter, a smaller farmers market is held on Olive Avenue, an Old Town side street. “(The festival) has been critically important,” Ochoa said. “It really gave people a sense of down-home, middle America.”
The city plans to take over the festival next year and use the revenues to partially fund the recently created position of Old Town promotional manager. While merchants and city officials are pleased with the growth, the area generated only $300,000 in sales tax revenues in the 2000-01 fiscal year, less than 5 percent of the city’s total. The city relies on revenues from the growing industrial base.
Rob Hammond has seen Old Town evolve since he took over what is now Neighborhood Pawn Inc. in 1989. Before, people would come to Old Town for a particular store or errand and then leave. Now, the area is more of an entertainment center, which means more foot traffic and increased sales. He said his business is up more than 70 percent.
But Hammond, mayor pro-tem of Monrovia, said Old Town Monrovia is unlikely to ever attract the large retail stores and large volume of sales of nearby Old Town Pasadena.
“Chain stores are highly unlikely to open business on Myrtle Avenue because of the car count…There is not enough of it and there never will be enough of it,” he said.
