DEATH OF A DELI VALLEY MAINSTAY'S WIDOW OWNER BEING EVICTED FROM LOCATION SHE'S HELD SINCE 1962.

Byline: Dominic Berbeo Staff Writer

PANORAMA CITY - Times have changed over the past four decades in this densely populated section of Los Angeles, and no one has felt it more than Reva Baptist.

A new landlord is doubling the rent at the sandwich shop Baptist and her late husband started in 1962. She's being evicted because she can't pay.

``I was shocked,'' said Baptist, 76, who has fed and come to know three generations of locals.

``It might be legal, but it's just not nice.''

Last month, she got a letter in the mail telling her she would have to leave by Wednesday, and she suspects the new landlord wants to push out most of the two dozen other small tenants in the retail center to make room for a large-scale development.

It's the latest in changes for a neighborhood in transition. Shop owners and their customers have been around for decades, but the area is changing - and the new trend is toward big developments, not small shops.

Greenbay Properties, the owner since March 2000, apparently plans to build a large development, a representative said.

``They wouldn't be kicking everyone out if they weren't going to tear down everything and redevelop it,'' said attorney Ross Stucker, who represents Greenbay. ``But the specific plans are confidential.''

``It's terrible; it's no way to treat someone,'' said Lenny Pascone, whose All State Vacuum shop is being evicted after 40 years, even though he offered to pay 30 percent more in rent, he said.

``A letter in the mail, just like that,'' Pascone said. ``I was planning to stay a few more years and sell the business and retire, but now I don't know what I'm going to do.''

He and other shop owners said they've tried contacting the new owners with no response.

Baptist thinks it may be a sign of the changing times when invisible companies make development decisions with no evident concern for the effect on individual lives.

``They don't care,'' she said. ``They simply don't care.''

Regular customers, who have come to know Baptist well over the years, are shattered by the loss.

``This store represents what the neighborhood used to be like,'' said Bill Price, 75, who came to the Valley in 1949 and has been coming in for his favorite pastrami sandwich since the 1960s.

``People would come in here for the gossip and the family feeling,'' he said. ``My family from Cooperstown, North Dakota, would visit town, and the first thing we'd do is come down to the deli to get sandwiches. It's what made the neighborhood a neighborhood.''

Baptist remembers how local groups like the Van Nuys Car Club would gather at the deli in the evenings to hold their monthly meetings.

Some customers, shocked by the eviction notice, say they will continue to visit Baptist at her home two blocks from the store.

``She's going to have to set up tables in her back yard to deal with all of us,'' says Linda Castleberry, a regular customer since the store opened.

Gert Stern, who helps out Baptist on occasion, worked at the deli for 29 years.

``People loved Reva and (husband) John,'' Stern said. ``They would feed anyone who was hungry, even if they didn't have money to pay. They would never turn them out.''

Robert and Danita Dekarlo moved in next door with their business, Mickey's Ladies Fashion, the same day the Baptists moved in. They say they fear they may face the same fate when their lease ends this year.

``It shouldn't be like this,'' Dekarlo said. ``The people here are like family, but there's nothing we can do.''

The Baptists served their first corned beef sandwiches at the Coronet Deli the same year Dodger Stadium opened, when the San Fernando Valley was still mostly citrus farms and new tract-home developments.

``There were no other places around,'' Baptist said. ``The mall was like an island.''

Over the years, hundreds of workers came by for lunch from the nearby General Motors plant, which closed down in the early 1990s.

Between serving customers, Baptist tells how for the past two years since her husband died, the business has not made a profit but rather has been a source of activity and social contact for her.

``There is so much sentimental value here,'' she says, putting together one of the $6 sandwich combinations she's become famous for over the years.

Located in the Woodman Arcade strip mall along with some two dozen other small businesses, the deli is a well-worn emblem of simpler times past.

On top of the store sits a neon ``Coronet Deli'' sign that conjures images of the 1950s, when the strip mall was built - a time when the Valley was transforming from rural lands to a suburban extension of Los Angeles.

A dozen tables are spread inside the deli, with a counter running along one side and a custom-made wall refrigerator with glass-window panel doors housing cold beverages.

Baptist moves with ease around the store, acknowledging customers by their first names as they come in to eat or just to chat.

``My husband and I raised two sons and made a life from this business,'' she said. ``We knew everyone from the neighborhood.''

Throughout most of the past four decades, the shop was a busy place where people would line up at lunchtime for a sandwich to go. At its busiest, the shop employed 10 workers, usually students from nearby high schools.

``They touched so many people's lives,'' says Reva's son, Bill Baptist, who worked at the store as a teen-ager and is now a general contractor. ``A lot of kids got their first jobs there.''

The area has changed much since the shop first opened. Then, the neighborhood was made up mostly of whites living in single-family, tract- style homes.

Fast-food franchises now abound, and most of the other shops in the mall and across the street cater to the Latino and immigrant populations. One shop sells pupusas, a Salvadoran food, while another shop offers money transfers to various Central American countries.

The Coronet Deli was the investment of a lifetime for the Baptists back in 1962.

Originally from the East Coast, the couple met in May 1942 on the boardwalk at New York's Coney Island while John Baptist, then in the Navy, was temporarily stationed in Brooklyn.

It was love at first sight. The two eventually moved to Los Angeles, where Reva's father helped John get a job at a deli in Grand Central Market after the war.

After saving for 14 years, the Baptists were like so many other post-war couples looking to own a home and live in the Valley.

Now Reva dreads being kicked out of the place that has touched so many lives.

``If only I were given a little more time to adjust,'' she said. ``This was our lives.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Coronet Deli owner Reva Baptist serves up one of her signature sandwiches at the Panorama City eatery she's being forced to leave after 39 years. The owners of this shopping center in Panorama City doubled the Coronet Deli's rent, forcing out the longtime fixture.

(3 -- 4 -- color) Homey touches like this humorous sign make steady customers treasure the Coronet Deli, which opened in 1962. Coronet Deli owners John and Reva Baptist pose for this mid-1980s photo. John Baptist died two years ago.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer