From Canyon To Cove: Giving — and getting — the business

As more businesses shut their doors and “for lease” signs go up in storefront windows in Laguna Beach, city officials and members of the business community are banding together to try to put some traction into the city’s floundering local economy.

It’s not a pretty picture.

The city’s sales tax revenues have plunged by 9% in the first quarter of the fiscal year, which began July 30, 2009, compared with last year’s receipts, according to the city’s latest financial reports. Transient occupancy taxes (the hotel “bed tax”) are down by 15% over the last year.

With Orange County unemployment at 9.4% as of September (the latest figures available), and the state’s October unemployment rate topping out at 12.5% — a post-World War II record — there are signs that the economy is hitting bottom, again.

With the historic recession as a backdrop, the Long-term Business Assistance Committee, founded by Councilwomen Elizabeth Pearson and Toni Iseman, has been meeting for a few months now. The committee has done more than just talk: It has spun off a series of “Open for Business” meetings for business owners new to Laguna, and sent out a survey to hundreds of residents asking them what they’d like to see — and patronize — in the commercial areas.

But even committee members admit they’re wading into some deep and murky waters.

Not business-friendly

The problem they face is that Laguna is just not seen as that friendly to business — and there are reasons for that, from stringent sign rules and a tight parking environment, to bureaucratic headaches. Throw in the sometimes lengthy lag time between applying for and getting a city permit, and you have a recipe for serious business butterflies, and it’s taken a toll on the once-lively downtown.

“We want to counter the perception that Laguna Beach is difficult to do business in, and to make it easier to be in business here,” said longtime Planning Commissioner Anne Johnson, a committee member from the get-go. “It’s getting harder and harder for the mom-and-pop business to get through the process.”

Johnson tells the story of one local restaurateur who had to jump through more hoops than a lion in a Las Vegas animal act to get up and running, and a jewelry store owner who ended up paying six months rent on a shop that she couldn’t move into due to permit requirements.

Small businesses wanted

Johnson insists that small businesses are wanted in Laguna Beach, and in fact are preferred over the corporate-owned or franchised “chains” — formula-based businesses such as Starbucks, Subway and KFC — that have inched their way into the city despite the efforts of city officials to dissuade them by imposing requirements that they “Lagunaize” their look and downplay their uniformity.

Yet it is the smaller, owner-operated retailers that can be effectively shut out if they are seen as duplicating or treading on the territory of other mom-and-pop shops in town. This is because the City Council and Planning Commission have an unusual amount of — shall we say subjective? — authority over who gets in the door and who is left out in the cold in downtown Laguna.

Johnson says the thing for these smaller, leaner and possibly less experienced merchants to do is to get to know the council and commissioners on an informal basis. She suggests simply picking up the phone to chat a bit about what they’d like to do and where they’d like to hang their shingle. (All on the QT, of course.)

It’s not bad advice.

It may not be any one thing that tends to discourage new businesses from moving in, or that causes regrets among those that are here. Why does one sporting goods merchandiser sail through the process while another can’t get his foot in the door?

Why does one merchant have customers beating a path to her door while another has cobwebs growing on the stoop?

It’s all something of a mystery — the interplay of commerce, supply and demand, and just plain salesmanship — that makes being a businessperson challenging, exciting and often fruitless, since, as we’ve been told time and again, more than half of all small businesses fail in their first year.

As a newspaper person, I’ve often shaken my head at the fact that a struggling shop owner will decline to run an ad for years on end, and then suddenly decide to splurge on advertising — for her going-out-of-business sale.

It’s maddening.

And yet small businesses are the life blood of the city, state and even the U.S. economy. They need us, and we need them.

One success story

I chatted this week with one local “mom-and-pop” business owner, Tom Williams of My Laguna Office.

Tom says he is doing better this year than ever — his business is up by 30%.

In fact, ever since gas prices skyrocketed and people began losing jobs, Williams has found a niche as an easy-to-get-to place next to the bus depot where one can buy paper and office supplies, send a package, surf the Internet and generally conduct business without an office.

And Tom is usually behind the counter offering jokes, advice, directions and personal service that you don’t find at Staples.

He’s obviously one of those astute business types that can somehow read the tea leaves and know what people will need before they even know they need it. Or he just got lucky.

Hurdles for businesses

But even Tom is discouraged by what he sees as ridiculous hurdles to business success in this town.

Signage is at the top of his list, and he blames the fact that he can’t put up what he considers “proper signage” for the many locals who simply have no idea he’s there to serve them.

“We can’t even put up balloons,” he says.

As for the business assistance committee, Tom is unconvinced.

“I think the city only pays lip service to supporting local businesses,” he said. “It’s attitude. The city is not friendly to tourists. They need a re-education in how to make people welcome. And they need to do something about parking.”

Finally, he says, “They only want stores that don’t have customers.” Ouch.

As a Broadway business owner, Tom feels his area has been left out by the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce. He points to upcoming Hospitality Night festivities, which focus on Forest Avenue, as proof.

Forest Avenue, he feels, needs its own merchant association, and should be operated more like a mall, with merchants required to stay open at key times, such as late hours during the holiday shopping season, with sidewalk dining and entertainment to draw customers.

All restaurants, Tom says, should be allowed to put out a few sidewalk tables to make the whole city more welcoming.

“It’s the little things, like not ticketing the cars of visitors who are ¼-inch over the line,” he says. “They need to be kinder to tourists.”

Open for Business meetings

Johnson says she was stunned when 30 people showed up to the first “Open for Business” meeting in October.

The second one drew fewer attendees, and the third one is set for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Community Center, 380 Third St.

Anybody looking at opening a business in Laguna Beach should probably put that on their to-do list.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 494-2087 or cindy.frazier@latimes.com.