Culver City revival leads to demise of a booster's eatery.

RESTAURATEUR Jay Handal, a Westside gadfly and the longtime president of the Greater West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, is closing his San Gennaro restaurant in Culver City and bowing out of the city's Downtown Business Association, which he helped create.

Handal is widely credited as an early advocate of resurrecting downtown Culver City by implementing a Business Improvement District in the late 1990s. The area near Culver and Venice boulevards has been transformed into a walking corridor of trendy shops and restaurants including Ford's Filling Station, owned by Chef Benjamin Ford, the son of actor Harrison Ford.

But Handal appears to have been the victim of his own success.

New restaurants that flooded the area and rising rents forced Handel to close his San Gennaro in Culver City, just months after he filed a Chapter 11 reorganization on San Gennaro Cafe in Brentwood.

Two years ago, Handal raised the ire of many businesses when he tried to boost the membership of the West L.A. chamber by using the mailing lists of the chambers in Santa Monica and Culver City in a marketing campaign. Critics complained he was trying to boost the West L.A. group's membership by poaching members from other chambers.

Staff reporter Kate Berry can be reached at [phone], ext. 228, or by e-mail at kberry@ labusinessjournal.com.