New retail space vacancies allow market invasion.

Most former Buffums locations find new occupants

At least half a dozen major Southland retailers went bankrupt during 1991, leaving behind dozens of empty stores. Many of these vacancies have since allowed out-of-town retailers to penetrate the Los Angeles marketplace, while others have been filled by local retailers looking to expand.

These new vacancies are "giving national retailers a chance to come into the marketplace and open several locations at the same time," said Mark Einbund, retail leasing representative at the Westside office of real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis Co.

Einbund said Austin, Texas-based Bookstar was one example of a retailer penetrating the Southland market by taking over some of the empty spaces bankrupt retailers have left behind. Bookstar currently operates five stores in Los Angeles County.

In one instance, Bookstar occupied part of a former National Lumber site in Culver City. Orange County-based National Lumber declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1990.

It's tough to find space on the Westside unless it has been left by a bankrupt retailer, Einbund noted. Thus, Bookstar was presented with an opportunity it might not have otherwise had, he said.

Bankruptcy court judges usually prefer to turn all leases of a bankrupt retailer over to a single new tenant because it simplifies the bankruptcy proceedings, said Howard Wong, a retail properties specialist with the South Bay office of Grubb & Ellis. However, not every site is always feasible for the newcomer, he said.

Thus, many deals are done on a "location-by-location" basis, Wong said.

The space bankrupt Buffums left behind throughout the Southland is being divvied up among several different tenants.

The Long Beach-based Buffums department store chain closed its doors in March 1991, leaving a total of 16 properties behind, eight of which are within Los Angeles County. The fate of most of these empty spaces has since been determined.

The 90,000-square-foot Buffums space in the Glendale Galleria was sold in December 1991 to May Department Stores by New England Mutual Life Insurance Co., the previous owner of the property. May Department Stores plans to expand the space and open a May Co. store there by Christmas 1992, say sources close to the deal who wished to remain anonymous.

Seattle-based Nordstrom is going to replace the Buffums space in the Arcadia's Santa Anita Fashion Park. The new Nordstrom is expected to open in 1994. The exact size and configuration of the expansion is undetermined, said Cindy Smith, executive assistant of Arcadia-based Santa Anita Realty Enterprises Inc., part owners of the mall.

Buffums operated another store in Pomona. Several candidates are looking at the freestanding store space, but "no one has chosen it so far," said Biff Byrum, chief executive of both the Pomona Chamber of Commerce and the Pomona Economic Development Corp.

The only potential tenant Byrum consented to mention was the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, located across the street from the vacant space. College officials are considering expanding their school into the available space, Byrum said.

Looking south, Pacific Theatres plans to build six screens in the space where Buffums used to reside in the Lakewood Center Mall in Lakewood. These new screens will be an addition to the nine screens Pacific Theatres already operates at two different locations in the mall. This brings the total number of Pacific Theatres screens at the mall to 15.

The 67,000-square-foot space left by Buffums in the Manhattan Village Shopping Center in Manhattan Beach will eventually be occupied by Los Angeles-based Bullock's. The department store chain is opening a Bullock's Men's Store on one level and a Bullock's Home Store on the other level of the now-vacant space, said a Bullock's spokesman.

The fate of three other Los Angeles Area spaces Buffums left behind is still up in the air. A store in the Peninsula Center in Palos Verdes may eventually be separated into two spaces, said Stephanie Bradway, property manager at the Palos Verdes office of Meridian Point Properties, the San Francisco-based company that manages the mall.

Officials at Meridian Point are talking to both apparel and electronics retailers as possible tenants, Bradway said.

Additionally, there are two Buffums empty spaces located in Long Beach, one of which was the retailer's flagship store. The flagship site's future still is undecided, Wong said. Also, any decision regarding the fate of space in Long Beach's Marina Pacifica shopping center has been put on hold because the entire mall is going to be renovated, he added.

Another retailer that has been the victim of bankruptcy is Los Angeles-based Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc., parent of the Broadway department store chain. Carter Hawley Hale declared Chapter 11 in February 1991, but has closed only the Broadway outlet in Carson.

The Carson store will be replaced by an Ikea furniture outlet, said Ted Lawson, senior vice president at the South Bay office of CB Commercial Real Estate Group.

It takes time for space left by a bankrupt retailer to be leased or sold to another retailer. Wong noted that the process can take anywhere from six months to two years.

Some other space still up for grabs has been left behind by defunct retailers including Long Beach-based Leo's Industries Inc., Los Angeles-based Barker Bros., Irvine-based RB Furniture and Silverwoods, which is owned by Chicago-based Hartmarx.

Leo's declared Chapter 7 in summer 1991. Three of its residual spaces are on the Westside, and three of the four retailers vying for these spaces are in the immediate vicinity of these spaces, Einbund said.

These prospective tenants are looking to upgrade their present locations form both a visibility and economic standpoint, he noted.

Barker Bros. declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy last fall and its spaces are still available, said Brian Bethea, senior associate with the Anaheim office of CB Commercial Real Estate Group. "Nothing has been finalized," Bethea said.

Meanwhile, the spaces RB Furniture left behind when it declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall are still available, Wong said. Parking at these sites is tight, so the most likely tenants would be another furniture retailer or other retailer that caters to a low volume of customers, he noted.

"Many of the RB sites were built many years ago in the 1970s and parking requirements were different," Wong explained.

Silverwoods, which announced its liquidation in fall 1991, is still operating. The chain's stores will close Jan. 31.

Most of these stores are inside malls, so the spaces will probably be taken over by the landlord or developer of the malls. Each landlord or developer probably has a list of retailers waiting to get into the mall, and will turn the space over to one of them, Wong said.

"The demand is pretty high" for these spaces, he said.