California Apparel News

While Hollywood’s retail scene has been dominated recently by highprofile retail projects such as Hollywood & Highland, many indie retailers are also moving to Hollywood Boulevard to take advantage of the area’s famous retail complexes.

These indies are often overlooked but are a growing element of Hollywood’s revitalization efforts, said Kerry Morrison, executive director of the Hollywood Entertainment District, a business improvement district that helps manage the area.

“It shows us that the small investor and entrepreneur continue to believe in Hollywood’s future by making these decisions and taking these risks,” Morrison said.

While the large projects in Hollywood are being tackled by big real estate investment trusts or assisted by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, most small shops have to rely on their own financial ingenuity to get off the ground.

The newcomers range from a West African eatery to a retro bowling lane. Business owners welcome the improvements after years of complaints about crime, filth, transients and poor retail traffic.

Hollywood has had its challenges despite the millions of dollars that have been pumped into projects such as the ArcLight cinema-and-retail complex.

International tourists have been slow to return to the area after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Store closures are still common as the economy slogs along. Dynamite Boutique, which sells women’s clothing on Hollywood Boulevard, is closing its doors next week. Several retailers inside Hollywood & Highland closed their doors shortly after the complex opened in November 2001.

But Hollywood is finding new life as a happening hot spot—nearly a dozen nightclubs have opened their doors in the past two years. With the nightlife come day jobs at new and expanding retailers.

Kambiz Batmanghelich, owner of sportswear retailer Antenna at 6363 Hollywood Blvd., welcomes the recent arrivals. The clubs and new projects have brought in more young people, which plays into Batmanghelich’s prime demographic: buyers of brands such as Nike, Phat Farm, Puma and Sean Jean.

“The international tourist traffic here is off about 35 percent, but we’ve seen [regional] tourism staying strong,” he said. “There are lots of clubs going up, and that brings in the young people. I just stay open later.”

The veteran retailer, who has been on the boulevard since 1989, is opening another store across the street next month. The two-story, 6,200-square-foot store will be called Drip and will feature a Niketown- style concept shop, as well as clothing from Adidas, Puma, Akademiks, Sean Jean, Phat Farm and RocaWear, among others.

Like Drip, the Hollywood Suit Outlet is adding to its existing presence by taking over the ground floor of the vacant Security Pacific building at 6385 Hollywood Blvd. A new women’s version of its store, which will occupy 15,000 square feet of the building, will open this summer.

In addition, some refreshingly hip spots for partying or dining out are opening in the area. Lucky Strike Lanes, a new 12-lane bowling alley with retro deacute;cor and automated scoring systems, has just opened on the lower level of the Hollywood & Highland shopping complex.

Yetti’s, a cafeacute; featuring West African cuisine, has opened at 6377 Hollywood Blvd. Vintage record store The Beat Market is set to open at 1606 N. Cahuenga Blvd.

Coming this fall to the 6900 block of Hollywood Boulevard are national chains such as The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Baja Fresh and Hooters restaurant, which will front the refurbished TV Guide building.

All this activity has inspired Mehdi Bolour to give his sevenstory Hollywood Plaza Building at 6753 Hollywood Blvd. a make-over. He’s redesigning the faccedil;ade to complement the surrounding historic buildings and bringing the 68,000 square feet of office space up to Class A status. One Eighteen—a 5,000-square-foot skate, snowboard and surf shop—will move into the ground floor along with a new restaurant this summer or early fall. Behind the building, Bolour has constructed a 3,000-square-foot patio, which will serve as a smoking area for the soon-to-open nightclub Day After next door.

With the Community Redevelopment Agency pumping more than $200 million into Hollywood, the indies are starting to feel indirect benefits.

Morrison said marketing campaigns aimed at regional tourism have helped the area. Consequently, small shops are feeding off the traffic provided by these new projects.

In addition, the trend of redeveloping older buildings into mixed-use residential-retail facilities has created new retail opportunities and traffic.

“What’s surprising about all these new shops going up is that none of them are tattoo parlors or lingerie stores,” Morrison said. “It says a lot about the transitioning of the retail base.”