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.”