LIFE AT THE CORNER OF VAN NUYS & LANARK; HARD WORK, DISAPPOINTMENT COME WITH THE TERRITORY.

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

A jade Buddha watches over Robert Lao's doughnut shop. Mexico's patron saint Virgen de Guadalupe protects the hair salon.

In the Chinese restaurant, Kim Yeung taped his hopes to the wall: ``Business is lively'' and ``Money comes easily,'' say the signs written in calligraphy.

Joined by cement and a grimy walkway, the shopkeepers in Maori Plaza share customers, parking spaces and one belief - that a small business is a passport to the American middle class.

Side by side in the Panorama City strip shopping center on the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard and Lanark Street, immigrants from around the world gamble their life's savings on America's promise that hard work brings success.

It's a dream they cling to as the hours pass without the comforting sound of a cash register's ring.

Samuel Matevosyan leafs through bills and work orders, calculating and recalculating his electronic store's finances.

The electric company will shut off his power - and shut down his livelihood - if he doesn't pay $177.45 by 5 p.m. today.

He takes a drag from a Marlboro, ignoring his own ``No Smoking'' sign.

``It's my store,'' he says.

But he doesn't know for how long.

Yesterday, he sold nothing. The day before, the same.

Like so many family-run shops in the rows of retail space that litter the San Fernando Valley's urban landscape, those in Maori Plaza are struggling.

Like a halfway house of retail, businesses come and go.

Two shopkeepers moved out in as many months. Three months later, the stalls remain empty.

Matevosyan fears he may be next to go. He scowls at the electric bill, throws down his pen and rubs his temples.

``Sometimes I think my heart is going to stop because of this,'' Matevosyan said. ``I can't sleep. I'm always thinking about everything.''

In Soviet Armenia, Matevosyan said, sweeping his arm across his neat though dusty inventory, he had an electronics store, too. Only there he sold standardized Soviet-made goods, not Kenwood, Pioneer and Sony.

Dazzled by the options after he emigrated eight years ago to avoid army service, he sold stereo systems at swap meets, saved his money, sold his truck and racked up $15,000 in credit-card debt to open the store earlier this year, replacing a thrift store.

But the customers never came. So he pays the electric bill with his credit card - the only one not maxed out.

``I'm not enjoying my life,'' he says. ``I have no business. I have no money. I have a small life.''

At 4 a.m., a streetlight illuminates Maori Plaza's parking lot as Robert Lao shuffles past the cigarette butts, empty cups and beer bottles to his doughnut shop.

Lao, 29, and his three brothers were the first tenants to move into the newly built Maori Plaza in 1987, toward the end of a two-decade mini-mall building frenzy that started in the 1970s on corners where service stations once stood.

Because the land was already zoned for commercial use, developers faced little resistance when they stepped in to replace the gas stations with orderly rows of retail.

``The thought was they would be a seed place for the little guy, a starter business,'' says Ron Maben, a city planner in the Van Nuys office of the City of Los Angeles Planning Department. ``Then they started to show up everywhere. It was like mushrooms after a rain. There weren't enough tenants moving in, and they became instant slums.''

Lao has seen dozens of ownership changes since he and his brothers pooled their savings and borrowed from friends to raise $100,000 to open the shop.

The photo processing store down the way became a thrift shop, changed owners about three times, then became an electronics store.

The pizza place became a submarine-sandwich shop and a short-lived pharmacy. Now it is vacant.

Lao sees himself as a survivor - first, of a brutal war in Cambodia that killed more than 1 million of his people and, now, of hard times in his business neighborhood.

The first blow was the slow death of the General Motors plant a few block away. Next came welfare cuts.

``My customers are always complaining they have no money now for doughnuts,'' Lao says.

Most recently, the convenience market next door closed, further diminishing foot traffic.

Every morning, Lao is the first to arrive. Industrial mixers buzz, peanut oil crackles and powdered sugar flies as he makes dozens of doughnuts.

By the time the sun rises, Lao already will have worked four hours - with another 12 to go.

``If we close early, we lose customers,'' Lao says. ``People expect anytime they want, they can have a doughnut.''

The cook

By midday, Maori Plaza is fully awake. Ranchera music spills from the gift shop. Customers are laughing, smoking, buying beer, tinkering under the hood of a car in the parking lot, stepping out of the bus on the corner.

The sign advertising Wok Chinese Food's daily special beckons: beef broccoli, fried rice and chow mein, all for $1.95.

In the kitchen, Kim Yeung fries shrimp and noodles with finesse, avoiding the lick of an orange flame up the sides of a greasy iron skillet.

Customers eat on Styrofoam plates at three brown Formica tables with a view of a TV with fuzzy reception.

This is Yeung's life, seven days a week, 10 hours a day.

Yeung's restaurant brings in $100 to $200 a day - just enough to cover expenses, including the rent and almost daily trips to a market in Chinatown.

The real breadwinner in the family is his wife, a parts-maker for an aerospace company in Orange County.

On the weekends, his wife and 13-year-old daughter come in to help, the only time they have together as a family, he says.

When he was a younger man, Yeung drove a taxi through the chaotic streets of Hong Kong, dreaming of making his fortune in America.

``Who knew it would be this difficult?'' he says.

And soon, Yeung, Lao, Matevosyan and their neighbors will have to contend with yet another obstacle that looms on the horizon where Van Nuys Boulevard dips under a railroad overpass.

Seventy-five acres of sparkling new retail/industrial space - called a power center in retail lingo - is scheduled to open in spring 1998 on the site of the defunct General Motors plant.

That means competition from a food court and chains like In-N-Out Burger, Home Depot, Babies `R' Us, Ross Dress for Less and Office Max.

``That power center is going to be a kiss of death,'' says Jack Kyser, president of the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County.

Consumers have changed the way they shop, Kyser says, relying less on neighborhood shops and more on regional malls and large shopping centers.

The mini-malls that stand the best chance of survival have an anchor store such as a Blockbuster Video or a 7-Eleven. Maori Plaza has neither.

``I don't think people know quite what to do with these facilities. People tend to drive right by these strip malls. A lot of them are sort of rundown and not very attractive,'' Kyser says. ``But in many cases, hope springs eternal. There are people who are going to give it a go.''

The hairdresser

Olga Salazar's scissors move rapidly, snipping hair in her one-room salon where $10 buys a shampoo, cut and blow-dry.

If Salazar has her way, someday she'll ``move to a nice neighborhood with rich people'' and charge $50. Instead of plastic smocks, she wants to wrap her clients in terry-cloth robes.

Salazar, 36, was born in Durango, Mexico, to a family with eight children. At 18, she came to the United States with her younger sister. Salazar studied English at night and worked days on an assembly line in a factory, where she met her husband, a mechanic.

After eight monotonous years at the factory, Salazar went to beauty school. She borrowed $25,000 from family members to buy the salon.

When her sons were born, she continued working even while she shuttled her youngest back and forth to doctors because of his bad asthma.

``You need to take care of yourself. You need to know something so you can be a good example for your children. You need to learn English and use your brain,'' Salazar says.

Even though her husband has been out of work for several months since he injured his back and her business barely breaks even, she pays a at California State University, Northridge, graduate student to tutor her children after school.

``In the future, I want them to go to college and have a good education,'' Salazar says. ``I have dreams. I really want more, for me and for them.''

The convenience store

Amir and Sarah Fahim are Daddy and Mommy's helpers in Sam's Market, Maori Plaza's main draw.

Amir, 7, rings up customers. Sarah, 3, is trying to learn.

They're bouncing a beach ball when a man tries to leave without paying for his beer.

Amir's father, Aladin Fahim, heads him off at the door, lunges for the beer and tears it from the sluggish man.

``These people get intoxicated, and I have two kids around, that's where the problems start,'' Fahim says. ``When he's sober, he's a nice enough guy.''

Fahim, 43, was an unemployed engineer in Egypt when he heeded his brother's call: Come to America, let's go into business together.

At first, ``I start to mop and sweep the floors and wash the dishes like all the foreigners to make quick money and pay the rent,'' Fahim says.

Little by little, they saved enough to buy Sam's Market.

There, amid the boxes of King Cobra and Olde English malt liquor, love bloomed. Fahim met his wife, Sandra, a Korean immigrant whose father used to run Wok Chinese Food.

``She would come in to buy milk,'' Fahim recalls. ``She was very, very, very quiet.

``I never had good luck with American girls,'' he says. ``We would always fight. I found too much difference.''

But with Sandra, he found common ground. They married eight years ago and rented an apartment a few blocks from the store.

Toward the end of a 12-hour day, Fahim massages his wife's feet. It's 10 p.m. Amir and Sarah doze on a quilt behind the cash register.

Fahim has been robbed twice. In one case, he believed the robber was holding his finger and thumb behind a sweatshirt, but he didn't want to chance getting shot.

``This is not an easy life,'' he says. ``Seven days a week, I work. Working, working, working. I want to take the kids to Denny's or Disneyland, but it's not possible.''

Several weeks later, Fahim decides to leave Sam's Market because of a dispute with the landlord.

Fahim is suing his landlord in civil court, claiming the landlord unfairly raised the rent and towed his customers' cars.

The landlord, Ori Fogel, an Israeli immigrant, denies the claim. He says he was simply enforcing the parking signs posted on the property.

He says he was going to evict Fahim anyway for failure to pay rent, a charge that Fahim denies.

Fogel says he is looking for new tenants, but halfheartedly. He knows how hard it is to make anything of this living.

``I don't want to see a person coming in and losing their money in three months or six months,'' Fogel says. ``I tell him: Go put the money in the bank and find a job.''

As Fahim closes up the shop for the last time, tears well in his eyes.

``This is like losing a member of the family,'' he says. ``My kids grew up here.''

But the family is not giving up. They're just relocating - to a mini-mall a few miles away.

CAPTION(S):

7 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Mall of America 

At Maori Plaza in Panorama City, big dreams and small shops lure immigrant families seeking success in the shaky world of retail

(2--Color) For many immigrants, their quest for the American Dream begins with a shop in Maori Plaza in Panorama City.

(3--Color) Amir Fahim, 7, makes change at Sam's Market while his mother, Sandra, naps on the floor after a long day.

(4--5--Color) Far left, weekends are family time at Wok Chinese Food, and daughter Jenny, 13, works with Lin and Kim Yeung at the restaurant. Near left, electronics salesman Samuel Matevosyan waits for customers.

(6--Color) Neon beckons at Taco Llama.

(7) Mornings mean brisk business at Robert Lao's doughnut shop.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News