I spoke to one of the local business owners on Sepulveda Blvd, and on this section of the street, located between Maple Ave. and Hickory St., businesses are just closing up and leaving the area.
This is not good.
Sepulveda Blvd. has turned into a relentless thoroughfare. The traffic is terrible during rush hour as m merchants, workers, and civil servants leave for home. When I turned into the parking for the Family Christian Center, I had to wait about five minutes since the eastbound traffic was unrelenting.
The Tous Les Jours bakery was doing pretty well for a number of years. I remember eating their in 2013 meeting with a local candidate for office. Now, the bakery is closed. I even asked a man walking out of the bakery about the store.
Yep. They're closed. The other business owner whom I had spoken to explained that there is just no profit or incentive to go into business, especially along the Sepulveda corridor. The Tous Les Jours bakery made the most out of that section tucked in the corner of that parking lot. It's simply not an ideal location for a restaurant. At least five restaurants tried to make something work in that section, and the bakery had lasted the longest.
But even they ended up leaving.
The Family Christian Bookstore towards the back of the parking lot is gone, too. The nationwide franchise had to shut down because of a number of factors, including the rise of the Internet, online sales, plus the hostile business climate in California is not helping.
Then I checked out the bank next to the Taco Bell:
There are three other Union banks in the area, so saturation may have played a part for this branch's closure. Of course, the Sepulveda pass probably didn't make it easier for clients to visit this bank, either.
This disappearance of local businesses is disheartening, though. Will anything come back to replace them? Worse yet, will the owners of the land roll up the lease and try to build more housing in this area? A bedroom community won't last long financially.
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