> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Midnight Special Bookstore delayed again as City Hall permits stall reopening - URL: https://www.smdp.com/new-chapter-in-midnight-special-sequel-owner-says-city-hall-bureaucracy-has-delayed-re-opening-the-bookstore/ - Published: 2003-08-25T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T02:50:00.000Z - Author: John Wood - Tags: Business, Downtown, #archive-import *CHECK OUT THE FUNNIES ON PAGE 12! Midnight Special looks to October re-opening* Nearly five months after the lease signing for its new downtown location, the Midnight Special Bookstore still hasn’t re-opened its doors in Santa Monica. Owner Margie Ghiz said Friday it will be at least another six weeks before customers are welcomed back into the popular liberal bookstore, which was forced off of the Promenade earlier this year by escalating rents. Ghiz had originally planned to re-open the store at 1450 Second Street earlier this summer, but said multiple delays have changed her plans. She pointed to City Hall as a key culprit and said she’s now cautiously hoping for an October opening. “It’s turned into a three-act play,” Ghiz said. “Everything, everything, everything needs permits. It’s ridiculous and it’s wearing me down, to tell the truth.” Ghiz attributes the drawn-out process to delays with the landlord, the contractors and city bureaucracy. But she said City Hall has been the major player in holding up the opening, despite that the bookstore is a local favorite politicians fought to keep in Santa Monica and that no structural changes are needed in the new space. The permitting process has set Ghiz back nearly $5,000, she said, while forcing her to forego profits because she is prevented from conducting business. Meanwhile, she continues to shell out more than $15,000 a month in rent. Add that to the $100,000 contractor’s bill and the $11,000 architect’s bill and nearly all of Ghiz’s resources have been exhausted, she said. Ghiz’s story of planning department woes comes as no surprise to dozens of small business owners who say John Wood/Daily Press Midnight Special Bookstore owner Margie Ghiz says delays at City Hall have pushed back the re-opening of her store at its new Second Street location. Recall: Schwarzenegger or bust for GOP despite City Hall’s goal of promoting locally owned businesses downtown, the process seems to be geared toward larger companies with deep pockets. “The permit process in Santa Monica is unreal,” Ghiz said. “It’s a little bit of everybody’s fault and I think, too, that doing construction in this town is organized around major corporations. So if you’ve got a delay and it costs 500 bucks, what’s that? It’s chump change. Well it’s not chump change for us. And there’s millions of those little things.” Ghiz said when she closed the bookstore on the Third Street Promenade earli-er this year she thought she had enough money in reserves to open in a new location. But instead, she has had to borrow money and expects there will be thousands of dollars more in expenses. The experience has been surreal for Ghiz. “It would only be a funny movie to somebody who’s already been through it,” Ghiz said. “After a while it was hysterical, it really was. You enter the planning department (in City Hall) and you’ve left the real world.” After struggling for weeks to obtain permits for plumbing, electricity, waste management and various other items, Ghiz said she finally complained to City Councilman Mike Feinstein. Though Ghiz said she was immediately contacted by apologetic and helpful City Hall workers, she still didn’t have her permits more than one week later. Officials from City Hall couldn’t be reached for comment Friday because City Hall was closed as part of its ongoing plan to reduce pollution by limiting the amount of car trips employees make and therefore they have every other Friday off. City Councilwoman Pam O’Connor said she recently received an e-mail message from City Manager Susan McCarthy indicating Midnight Special ran into delays because of a problem with a contractor Ghiz hired to haul away construction debris. Apparently the original contractor did not have the proper certificate filed with City Hall to take the waste. That delay has since been straightened out. O’Connor said much of the restrictions are simply part of doing business in any modern city. “The cities over the 20th century developed zoning codes and development standards, and we as a society have looked at ways to provide clean air and clean water,” O’Connor said. “There’s a regulatory side. No matter how beloved an institution is, everyone has to go in being treated fairly and held to the same standards.” Still, O’Connor said the planning department’s regulations need to be re-examined every couple of decades or so when restrictions and laws become too burdensome to navigate through. City Councilman Ken Genser said Ghiz’s experience is not at all unique. He said there is plenty of room for improvement in the planning department and added that City Hall must be diligent in fixing the problems. “In spite of planning department officials’ goals to improve the process, we continue to hear many complaints about unclear and excessively bureaucratic processes, and the city not meeting its reasonable time expectations,” he said. To date, Ghiz said she’s paid nearly $5,000 in fees, everything from $1,080 to the building and safety department to $202 to the transportation manager and $323 for something called “permit issuance.” She said she will have to pay nearly $1,000 more to have her proposed signage go before the Architectural Review Board, a city board that recommends to the City Council whether a local project should be approved or denied. Besides the financial issue, Ghiz pointed to slow service in City Hall, which has been experienced by many business owners. In response, the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and the Planning Commission have both separately decided to conduct independent audits of the planning department’s management and operations. “You sit in the building department for 15 hours waiting to talk to somebody, but once you’re on site there’s someone there every day checking in on you,” Ghiz said. Ghiz finally got the proper permits in place for the new Midnight Special last month and her contractor is eight days into what will likely be a 30-day project to upgrade the bookstore’s interior. In the meantime, bookcases are conspicuously absent in the store, as are books. Only the steel skeleton of what will one day separate the shop from the cultural center and offices stands. Midnight Special began 32 years ago in Venice by civil rights activists. By the end of its first year, two of its founders had been jailed for refusing to give the FBI the names of friends and customers who were attending anti- Vietnam War meetings. The store, which most recently spent nearly two decades on the Promenade, closed its doors in February. Asked when the shop will finally reopen, Ghiz said hopefully sometime in October, but then quickly added, “I don’t give estimates anymore because of what happens. I just hope. And then three to four weeks afterwards we’ll have a big open house.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/082503-01_01-7.jpg) Midnight Special Bookstore owner Margie Ghiz says delays at City Hall have pushed back the re-opening of her store at its new Second Street location. (Photo: Ghiz’s story of planning department woes comes as no surprise to dozens of small business owners who say John Wood/Daily) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 25, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/082503.pdf?ref=smdp.com)