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# Main Street denizens expect a bright future Comb-over
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/main-street-denizens-expect-a-bright-future-comb-over/
- Published: 2005-01-15T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:00:43.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Business, Main St, #archive-import, Homeless

*Following a dark period, change is in the air all along popular city strip*

MAIN STREET — This funky stretch of restaurants, shops and eclectic eye candy is bracing for a brighter future.

Change has been constant on Main Street in recent months, with anchor retailer The Gap closing shop in late December and ground breaking on two major developments that will bookend the popular strip for years to come.

What’s more, officials plan on Monday to string lights along both sides of Main Street, from Pico Boulevard to the southern Santa Monica city limit. The white lights will lend a festive, intimate air to the popular thoroughfare and will stay up throughout the year, according to Gary Gordon, who heads the Main Street Merchants’ Association.

“It’s going to be decorative, but it also will add some light to the street,” Gordon said. “It will really give some definition to Main Street as a business, shopping and dining district.”

Gordon manages an $85,000 annual budget as head of the association, which collects merchant dues ranging from $100 to $2,000, according to Gwen Pentecost, an analyst for City Hall. Pentecost, Gordon and other city officials said Main Street is building its way out of a recession.

“As to the vitality of Main Street... it’s beginning to pick up again,” said City Councilman Herb Katz, an architect who drafted plans for a new residential and retail project at Main and Marine streets. “It hit a slump and it’s beginning to come back. I saw a lot of life over the holidays down there.”

Sales tax receipts for the holiday shopping months have yet to be tallied, but the popular Main Street strip typically generates nearly $800,000 in annual sales tax proceeds for Santa Monica City Hall, which receives 1 percent of the value of most sales, according to Dave Carr, City Hall’s treasurer. City Hall collected $371,335 in sales tax from Main Street merchants during the first two quarters of 2004, records show. The mile-long strip, which has about 150 restaurants and retail outlets, has seen its fair share of alterations to its appearance over the past several months. Among the more notable changes was the closing in December of The Gap, an anchor store located smack in the middle of Main Street.

Gordon said high rent probably wasn’t the only factor that led to the store being closed.

“Everybody always says it’s the rent, but the fact of the matter is some places have survived rent increases,” he added. “I don’t know how (The Gap) really ever performed. Some people thought it was always really out of place and the street is really more of an independently owned kind of place, especially with clothing stores.”

After months of delays, the Good Urth, a cafe on the north end of Main Street, is expected to open sometime in the next few weeks, along with a Venice-based bike store called Bike Attack, which will move into a vacant space across the street. Several other shops have opened in recent months, including a new art shop, a mom-and-pop designer clothes store and a gift boutique.

Meanwhile, work continues on two major mixed-use projects that will serve as book-ends for Main Street. Construction is underway on developments at Main and Marine streets, and at Main and Bicknell streets. Both will include new residential units and ground-floor spaces for merchants.

Merchants had mixed emotions regarding the evolution of Main Street.

Matt Schuppel, 42, who opened Shoop’s European Deli with his wife four and a half years ago, said the changes likely would help solve some of the strip’s problems, but not all of them.

“You’re still dealing with all the issues down here,” Schuppel said. “I still have the homeless guys walking in my restaurant every day... Still, it’s nice with all the improvements and everything. There are other areas of Santa Monica that are really put together well, and it’s about time Main Street caught up.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011505.pdf?ref=smdp.com)