‘Exhausted’ Store Owners Take Village Project to Court

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

With tears in her eyes, Erica Simpson, for the last 16 years proprietor of P2, the Swarthmore Avenue fashion boutique that brought a rare splash of counter-culture to the area, admitted she does not know whether suing Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village project will save her business.

In a writ served last week, Simpson claimed that her store—one of four shops and two banks affected or surrounded by bulldozers and cranes—is being ruined by construction work.

“I don’t know what happens next. I cheered when Caruso unveiled his vision for redeveloping this area. Maybe I was naïve, but I did not realize that I would be treated so badly, that I would be so let down,” Simpson said.

In her complaint, which she frankly described as a last-moment bid to save her business, Simpson said the developer promised to pay $100,000 to help her business during the two years construction would be taking place around her store.

The money never materialized.

She claimed that the remaining stores on Swarthmore not bought out by Caruso have been shrouded in dust, blighted by building noise and isolated from the rest of the Village by misleading signs declaring that the area has been closed.

Last Monday Simpson said that her business has fallen off to almost nothing and only friends are helping her keep going. “I am sick and tired, exhausted and disappointed. I did not want to take this legal action, but having lost most of my customers, what else can I do?”

Simpson has made common cause with her Swarthmore neighbor, Isobella Solis, who has run a salon in the Palisades since 1988.

In her legal complaint Solis said that she has suffered health problems, including coughing and high fever, since construction began. She also said it has undermined her business.

“Her salon is very much part of who she is, and it’s being taken away from her,” said her attorney, Drew Pomerance, who is seeking punitive damages from Caruso for nuisance, negligence, trespass and interference with economic advantage.

Two other stores on the same afflicted block, Carly K and Molly Flaherty’s Get Dressed, have not joined the legal action. But staff have talked about the difficulties of attracting customers.

Two affected banks, US Bank on the corner of Swarthmore and Sunset and City National Bank, which is partially fenced in on Swarthmore, remain open. But City National Bank is planning to move to new premises in the Village later this year.

Last week the section of Swarthmore closed by the Caruso development was given a “spring cleaning,” with banners suggesting closure removed. Relatively small white signs now point the way to the remaining retail outlets, but there are few visitors.

On Monday, Caruso Affiliated declined to comment on the litigation.

The Palisades Village project is due to be completed in the summer of 2017, but meanwhile another related issue has grown more heated.

That is the removal and transportation of 122,000 cubic yards of dirt from the site to help fill Potrero Canyon and, after 30 years of delay, turn it into a public park.

At the last Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting on Thursday, Oct. 13, it emerged that Caruso has an exemption, which, in the past, prevented vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds from using Chautauqua to protect its fragmented and waterlogged road surface.

But it remains the favored route for 100 dump trucks per day hauling dirt to the city-owned site where Potrero Canyon meets PCH.

They will be stockpiled until the city can raise the money to build the park. The city will only say that will happen “at a later date.”

The alternative route for 10 weeks of haulage, starting next month, is down Temescal Canyon. But that appears doomed as it requires a new Caltrans red light on PCH so the trucks can turn into Potrero. And that seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

Taking free dirt from the Village project will save the city around $3 million, said one PPCC member, incentivizing the city into making sure Caruso does not send his dirt elsewhere.

An updated report on the Caruso-Potrero dirt switch will be discussed at the PPCC meeting on Thursday, Oct. 27.

There will be further opportunities to question this vision when the city of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety discuss grading plans for the canyon at a public meeting, but that is not likely to be held this year.

There will be another opportunity at a public meeting to be held by the parks department when its handing out contracts,

The latest official date for the opening of the Potrero Canyon Park is 2019.