A roaming mariachi band and the house band from Marci’s Sports Bar & Grill filled the parking lots with music at Bouquet Canyon and Plum Canyon roads Thursday.
But the tunes and pop-up tents weren’t enough to lift the spirits of some business owners who feel let down by the Santa Clarita City Council’s approval of a road closure that they say is choking their businesses.
The pop-up event has been the city’s biggest response so far to a closure that council members approved a half-dozen years ago, during the pandemic.
The City Council approved closing off Bouquet Canyon Road traffic for nearly a year, back in 2020, in order to widen the floodplain and facilitate the building of a housing community next to a pair of former L.A. County juvenile camp sites on Bouquet.
While the road’s realignment also has been part of the master plan, according to city officials, the timing of the closure was to facilitate the construction of 375 for-sale homes by Lennar — the nation’s second-largest home builder by volume.
And that work didn’t begin until February, prompting a community outcry, many contending they didn’t realize what was coming, or that they didn’t know Benz Road would be gated off to local traffic.
The new project’s homes are bound to provide a host of new customers for merchants well-positioned for growth at that intersection. But on Thursday, several again shared doubts they’ll survive the closure until January, with almost all of the access to their business from the north either blocked or gated.
Pop-up Thursday
The city’s pop-up event Thursday was an attempt to draw foot traffic, but some say it may be too little too late.
“We were all kinda wondering when the city was going to take care of us,” said Senior Pastor Benjamin Gideon of Rest in Grace Church, which hosts in-person and virtual services at Bouquet Canyon Plaza.
He said a positive aspect of the situation was that the struggle has brought many of the businesses together and built relationships.
He also said his congregation may not have been impacted the way some businesses next door are, but also that he doesn’t have people “find us by accident anymore,” because that’s hard to do that when there’s no access.
For Bill Khalil, the owner of Bouquet Plaza Liquor, the challenges were more quantifiable.
He showed a back storeroom full of merchandise that he said he couldn’t sell without foot traffic in the door, which has been devastated since the closure began in February, he said.
“We have to pull all this from the shelf. All this just expired because there’s no movement in the past four or five months,” he said, pointing to the pallets. “I mean, all that we’re looking for, if they can give us some compensation for all the loss to be able to pay the rent without any hassle.”
The city seems to have received the message, but whether relief comes in time remains to be seen.
City response
Santa Clarita’s economic development staff has tried a few things to help prior to the pop-up, including social media videos to raise awareness.
John Meshriky, who opened his 7-Eleven location just before the notices for the closure went out, said the pop-up would be helpful — if it were every other day, which he knows isn’t possible.
“You know what? At the end of the day, I’m literally a convenience store,” he said.
“I’m a convenience for people to conveniently get here and get what they want,” he said, which hasn’t happened because of the closure, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in losses.
In the weeks prior to the closure, there was a large outcry from the businesses and their neighbors who complained that this would devastate the shopping centers.
Tyler Pledger, the city’s economic development manager, said that the city staff has now received direction by the City Council to look into potential grant assistance for the impacted businesses.
“Essentially, we got direction from City Council at the very last meeting to come back after the hiatus break with more information, and kind of some guidelines on what we could do,” Pledger said Thursday, while walking around the pop-up event. “And so we will spend our summer hiatus doing research and being prepared to come back to council (members) once they’ve returned, with some information to share with them.”
When asked why those plans are just being formulated five months into the closure, she said that city staff had not been given any direction to explore financial-assistance options prior to last week.
Until the council meeting, staff have been meeting with the businesses to see how they can help with the “existing resources available,” she said.
“What (City) Council is asking us to look into isn’t something that exists within our programs today, so we’ll have to see what it is that we can create in response,” she said.
She mentioned COVID-19 assistance as perhaps the last time the city helped businesses like this.
Developer silence
The biggest beneficiary of the Bouquet Canyon Road closure, Lennar, has also been the quietest in terms of addressing their neighbors’ concerns, according to City Manager Ken Striplin.
Striplin told the City Council members at their July 14 meeting that Lennar had yet to return any of his calls regarding assistance.
John Musella, a local spokesman for the company, referred a request for comment to Lennar’s corporate office. Several of the business owners said they’ve spoken with a representative from Lennar, Levon Ghukasyan, the developer’s director of forward planning.
He did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Meshriky said there seemed to be a disconnect when he finally got ahold of Ghukasyan on the phone recently.
“He said, ‘Hey, how can I help you?’” Meshriky said, “And I laughed, because, just the question — how off-putting it is.”
He said he repeated it back to Ghukasyan: “How can you help me?” he recalled.
“He’s like, ‘Oh, I could put your flyer up in the break room. We got a lot of (workers).’
“I didn’t see one Lennar worker, and you know why? Because of the road closing, they couldn’t get around on their break,” Meshriky said. “So — irony, you know.”
The one positive, he said, is that he was told the work is on track. Meshriky knows he won’t make it if the closure goes any longer than planned.
Waiting for relief
LeeAnn Willis, who runs a Vincenzo’s pizzeria on the corner with her husband, said the biggest challenge in the road closure has been how it’s devastated the lunch crowd.
She said the business might hang on at its current location a little bit longer, only thanks to an outpouring of support she and her husband received after sending an email to customers letting them know how bad the impacts were.
She was grateful for that support, she said, and wanted to “give them a shout-out.”
“Thirty-five years,” she said, mentioning how long they’ve been at the location, “and this may be our last few months.”
Mik Prajapati, who opened the Mail and Stamp Center the month prior to the road closure, said Mayor Laurene Weste stopped by Thursday to talk about how the city was developing a plan to help him and his neighbors.
When asked about it, he was a bit skeptical.
“I mean, it’s definitely encouraging,” he said Thursday, “but you know, I don’t know until it happens. It’s kind of like, I can go on all day, every day about promising, you know — until it’s delivered.”
Pledger said in an email Friday that city staff was encouraged by the turnout at the pop-up event, calling it a reminder of “how our community comes together to support local businesses when they need it most.” She added: “In the meantime, city staff will continue promoting the Shop Local campaign and connecting businesses with existing resources available to them.”
