Costa Mesa center undergoes face lift

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- Hillgren Square is getting a $12-million make-over, the

owner announced Tuesday.

The East 17th Street square, which includes Mi Casa Mexican

restaurant, Garduno’s Express Cuisine and Celestino’s Quality Meats, will

be remodeled with gabled slate roofs, pitched copper-clad steeples,

repaved and re-striped parking areas, a promenade set off by concrete and

stacked stone columns, colorful awnings and landscaping.

The goal will be to create a more upscale center, said Peter

Desforges, owner of the center and president of the Wohl Investment Co.

“It’ll be much more attractive than the existing center, and it will

add a better-quality tenant to the neighborhood there to complement some

of the existing tenants we have,” Desforges said. “We have . . . local

favorites everybody loves, but we also have some more thrift-shop-like

stores that are not in keeping with the image we perceive the street to

be turning into.

Many of the older centers along East 17th Street also will be improved

over time, Desforges added.

“The street draws from high-income demographics in Newport Beach,

Corona del Mar and the Balboa Peninsula, so it can support higher-end

tenants and the rehabilitation that goes along with that,” he said.

Ed Fawcett, president and chief executive of the city’s Chamber of

Commerce, said the renovation, which began more than a month ago, is

much-needed.

“The building was old and dated,” he said. “It’s a rehabilitation that

is very needed to bring it up to more current standards for a more

contemporary period. It will bring the center more in line with what

you’ve seen at the Ralph’s Center, the K-Mart center on Harbor Boulevard

and some of the other rehabilitations around town.

“I hope this dominoes all along 17th Street and that other property

owners do likewise.”

Though he plans to keep the majority of the center’s tenants,

Desforges said he will negotiate with new tenants, which will make up

about a third of the stores.Tenants now at the center have mixed opinions

on the renovation.

“It’s going to be great,” said Dennis Jochem, manager of Celestino’s.

“It just looks so much better being upgraded and modernized. . . . They

are doing a great job.”

John Azam, manager of Shoe Island, said the renovation has been bad

for business so far.

“The way it looks right now, it is killing our business,” he said.

“People, especially the ladies, don’t feel safe entering a construction

site even though they have done a good job. Many of the tenants are gone

because they don’t know what the landlord has in mind, as far as future

rents.

Azam said new leases ask the tenants to pay about three times more for

rent and customers probably won’t make up that difference.

“We cannot stay in business unless the customer pays for it, and we

don’t know who can afford the kind of rent they are asking,” Azam

continued. “Maybe in the long run, we will have the customers to do it,

but at this point we’re suffering very badly.”

In the meantime, Azam hopes that, once completed, the shopping

center’s new face brings customers back.

Bryan Rice, manager of SportsWorld, said he is also hopeful.

“It’ll be a good thing when it’s done,” he said, “but right now it’s

tough. We are definitely getting less business.”