His case is unrelated to the redevelopment revolution that has caused many in the business community to boil with fury at City Hall. Mr. Reismans most recent landlord died about a year and a half ago. But not until early this month did the new landlord appear and declare Trader Jims rent was being doubled, effective Feb. 1. In that case, Mr. Reisman said, he was closing his store on Jan. 31.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, just east of Downtown, at The Jungle nursery, 8817 Washington Blvd., a different story was unfolding.
Earlier this month, the Saez brothers, who had survived September and December moving deadlines, said their landlord, the MTA, had given them one final moving deadline, Jan. 31.
When the month of February bows in tomorrow morning, however, The Jungle operating in the shadow of a whole cast of MTA-doomed businesses will, indeed, be doing business at the same location it has occupied since the late 1990s.
We will be open until further notice, Gerard Saez told thefrontpageonline.com this afternoon.
The Strategy
In anticipation of building a 9-mile light rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City in two or three years, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and City Hall have been busy. Between them, they have been buying up, or forcing out, or knocking out, nearly every business in the light rail path and then some.
Once a flourishing neighborhood for commerce, generously sprinkled with artistic entrepreneurs, between the MTA and City Hall, the Washington-National region has been converted, practically overnight, into Dead Mans Gulch.
Besides The Jungle and its clouded status, three surrounding enterprises remain upright.
But for how long?
Surfas Restaurant Supply and Gourmet Foods, a family business founded in 1937, has been forced to shift its warehouse operation no later than the court-ordered date of July 1 to a site a few hundred yards away, on Landmark Street.
Patrick Vorgeack, the proprietor of Metal Art, 8829 Exposition Blvd., is the last owner physically left standing on the eerie, reluctantly abandoned street.
That leaves the property of one other resistor, Marc Chiat. Unlike Mr. Vorgeack, his ally in locking arms and standing stoutly against City Hall, Mr. Chiat is nowhere to be found.
At a point sometime this year when City Hall resumes searching for him, it seems unlikely anyone in the neighborhood will cooperate in providing clues.
The fumes, the odious aftertaste clinging to the stale air floating above Exposition Boulevard after the other entrepreneurs have been driven away, remains thick with intrigue and anger.
