By Michael Jondreau Santa Monica
It remains puzzling that a business such as Fisher Lumber, netting, according to your article, $12 million to $13 million annually, would simply close its doors (SMDP, Feb. 16, page 1). Less puzzling, of course, is the loss of a landmark and a tradition. A top problem in Santa Monica, from the national chains clogging the Promenade to the permit parking everywhere, is the changing face of the city. Ken Genser’s gooey comment that “This is a wonderful day for the people of Santa Monica” because of the city’s acquisition of Fisher’s lot could only have been made by a promoter or a politician. They’re not making any more large pieces of land, Genser said.
They’re not making any more full-service lumber yards in Santa Monica any-more, either, Councilman Genser, and now there are none. Whereas we already have Memorial Park, perhaps it’s time the city live up to that resentful “People’s Republic of Santa Monica” shibboleth of the ’80s.
That simply reflected the landlords’ anger at an honorable and American institution — rent control. Now the city has the chance to make the socialist charge real by running Fisher’s itself. There’d be no complaints from competition. The city’s razing the business anyway. Imagine what all that profit could do for the city’s expenditures. Perhaps some of the income could go to parking structures in major business areas, providing parking for employees and patrons, and relieving residents in permitted areas from their excuse for excluding the rest of us from full use of the public streets in front of their homes. “Sometimes progress isn’t progress,” the outgoing Fisher manager, Eric Jorgensborg, was quoted as saying. Personally, I’m not calling the closure of this reliable business with the familiar employee faces and the lot jammed with contractors’ trucks every morning progress at all. Regress, maybe.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 23, 2005. Read the original PDF.