Restaurant owners find empty seats at their tables.

Recession, riots cut a slice through dining room business

Downtown restaurateurs have been bucking recession and bad-image problems for some time, and the recent riots set them further back -- at least temporarily.

Easily garnering lunchtime crowds from local office buildings, restaurants long have scrambled to lure evening business. In part because of customers' fears about traveling downtown at night, they have had difficulty picking up more than the customary theater and conventioneer clientele, with a smattering of local residents thrown in.

The recession reduced tourist and conventioneer traffic, while locals tightened up on dining-out. And now some restaurateurs wonder whether the riots will dampen tourism further and bolster diners' uneasiness about supping downtown.

Business has been off about 10 percent in the past year at Engine Company No. 28, in the heart of the financial district, said Linda Griego, partial owner of the restaurant and deputy mayor of the City of Los Angeles. The eatery still pulls in lunchtime business people and evening tourists and conventioneers, Griego said, but young professionals with families are not eating out as often as in pre-recession days.

Business also is off at the Original Sonora Cafe on Figueroa Street, reported owner Ron Salisbury. He said sales are down about 20 percent from 18 months ago.

He complained that the restaurant district suffers from an image problem, concerns about crime combining with a lack of public awareness of the variety of eateries available downtown. An increase in convention traffic could revive sales, but that is not expected to occur before late 1993 when the Convention Center expansion begins to attract more activities, Salisbury said.

Meanwhile, Taix French Restaurant, a moderate-priced establishment, has boosted business at a consistent 2 to 4 percent pace for the past four years. But the riots cost it about $30,000 in revenues, mostly through canceled banquet bookings (which normally comprise half of total sales), said General Manager Mike Taix.

While business bounced back quickly, Taix said, he was wary of the potential long-term impact, as fewer people travel downtown to dine. Stricter drinking regulations already have crimped dinner crowds as people shortened the distances they were willing to drive, he said. And a riot-bred perception of downtown as dangerous and crime-ridden may worsen the situation.

Forming the backdrop to restaurateurs' concern is the need to attract dinner diners and avoid dependence on lunchtime crowds from local office buildings. "You are doomed to failure if you are trying to target your market" to lunch business, said Taix.

Meanwhile, some downtown areas are doing well. Chinatown, north of the Civic Center, and Little Tokyo, between Alameda and Main streets, are thriving, said Susan Gilmore, downtown strategic plan coordinator for the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Both obviously benefit from being tourist attractions. But they also have strong residential bases and there's a lack of other local dining options, all of which combines to create busy lunch and dinner business, Gilmore said.

Still, fretting aside, experts believe there is room for growth in the downtown restaurant market.

"Downtown is under-restauranted," said Mark Tarczynski, retail properties specialist for CB Commercial Real Estate Group Inc., based downtown.

Several new developments are coming. McCormick & Schmicks, a 13,000-square-foot seafood restaurant, is under construction at the First Interstate World Center, and La Salsa is about to nail a lease for 1,600 square feet in the same building. One of three scheduled for California Plaza is a 7,000-square-foot branch of Tony Roma's A Place for Ribs.