It is over in Culver City for The Jungle.
Regarded by its fiercely loyal customers as the finest nursery of its kind on the Westside, The Jungle is the latest commercial victim of pending light rail in the Washington-National triangle.
Forced to move by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in anticipation of the arrival of light rail service — in three or four or five or more — years, the Saez brothers will turn out the lights on Sunday, Nov. 18, 11 days before Thanksgiving.
Unanimously, the four of them feel that except for their client base — 95 percent of their business is of the repeat kind — there will be little to be grateful for on this holiday.
Getting the Bird
Thanksgiving will feel more like a genuine turkey than a pause when Americans traditionally give thanks for the bounties benefiting them.
Raising the threatening weapon of eminent domain, City Hall and the MTA, between them, have done a pretty thorough job of wiping out the business base in the Washington-National triangle to clear the way, ultimately, for light rail.
Of all the merchants who have been sidelined, not one has been known to leave happily.
Not Voluntary
The Jungle’s relocation — to an address outside of Culver City that the brothers said they cannot yet disclose — was forced by an agreement to which they submitted in the latest round of legal negotiations with the MTA.
The brothers hope to be open on their new grounds by Nov. 1. They are referring to the location as a “temporary stop,” lasting perhaps three years. They expressed confidence that at the end of that period, The Jungle will be back in business in Culver City.
Smaller, Costlier
Meanwhile, the reality of commerce at their next stop is not encouraging. Chilling, they call it, and that isn’t colloquial slang.
The two most important numbers at the Saez brothers’ new location are:
Space will be 15,000 square feet, between one-third and one-fourth the present 55,000 square feet.
Rent will be doubled.
“We asked the MTA to give us another two or three months, and we could have made much more desirable arrangements,” Gerard Saez told the newspaper. “But they refused.”
Expenses Soared
The brothers and the monster-sized MTA, not very different from Dave and Goliath, have been legally slugging at each other since last year.
The feisty brothers, who were together in the jewelry business for 15 years previously, won numerous extensions.
Each time it looked as if City Hall or the MTA or a giant in the sky were going to flip the coffin closed on the brothers, The Jungle bounced back from the Darned Near Dead.
A Financial Decision
As this summer waned, though, and still another courtroom date loomed, the brothers coughed, conferred and concluded that capitulation was the honorable deed.
The game, as the MTA and everybody else in the courtroom knew all along, was getting too steep, too expensive for anyone not named Getty, Gates or General Mills.
Since the mid-1990s, the Saez brothers have formed a Chamber of Commerce-model bond with their customers, both with individuals and with institutions.
Outcome Never in Doubt
But the fiscal wrecking ball wielded by the MTA in its relentless trudge across the Westside to clear room for the arrival of light rail was always in the face of tge Saez family.
As they go out the door and out of town, the Argentine-born brothers say they have two strong concerns — the welfare of their 10 employees, most of whom will have to be let go permanently, and the likely decline of their present neighborhood to the blight level.
First, their workers:
“Unlike a lot of businesses,” says Gerard Saez, “we provide health insurance for all of our employees. Many of them have it for the first time in their lives. And now they risk losing it.”
10 Families Jeopardized
With The Jungle moving to more modest quarters in November, the brothers figure they will have to let eight of the 10 of them go.
“All of them are supporting families, and it’s a terrible blow for them going into the Christmas season,” Mr. Saez said.
As for the neighborhood, it already has begun to slide, the brothers said.
Before The Jungle nursery opened in the middle 1990s, Mr. Saez pointed out, “this neighborhood was a haven for junkies.” Over the last year, as an increasing number of buildings have become vacant through eminent domain, “there has been an upswing in blight — transients, graffiti, actual human feces, campfires, if you can believe that, couches, needles. I can see this going back to what it used to be, a lawless, blighted neighborhood,” Mr. Saez said.
A Time to be Cynical
With the state’s portion of transportation funding in doubt due to the recent budget dispute, the Saez brothers are not convinced that there truly is an urgent need for the MTA to “so abruptly” reclaim its property that The Jungle has been leasing.
Supposedly, we have to move now, Gerard Saez said, skeptically, so that the MTA can begin construction. The need was described as “urgent.”
“We are sad to leave Culver City,” Mr. Saez said. “And we are saddened that the folks at City Hall could not do more. But I do understand that they have political limitations.”
