Neighbors avoid culture clash, help discount retailer reinvent his business

PHOTO by JEFFREY R. GOULD

Cramped and nearly windowless, with towering racks and an inventory that includes reading glasses and piñatas, sodas and beauty products, the 98 Cents Pine Discount Store is the type of retailer you just know certain neighborhoods in Long Beach need. But apparently not the neighborhood around Pine Avenue and Eighth Street. Finished condo and loft developments around downtown have drawn homeowners looking for an upscale urban experience. They’re running into—sometimes almost literally—the sorts of people whose urban experience is perhaps a little more downscale. People like the target clientele of the 98 Cents Pine Discount Store.

“I’ll go in [the store] and buy some chips and a soda, and the kind of people you see going in there—they’re all very nice people, but you do not see the new residents going in there at all,” says four-year resident Loara Cadavona. She and her husband moved here from West Los Angeles because they liked Long Beach’s “urban feel,” and purchased a loft in the landmark 1927 former York Rite Masonic Temple building. But at heart, they wish their adoptive area and its mini-Walmart had more to offer.

“We talk to some of the new residents and they say ‘He should carry milk,’ ” says Cadavona, a member of the North Pine Neighborhood Alliance, a coalition of residents and business owners who live between Third and Tenth streets, and Pacific Avenue and Long Beach Boulevard. “We tell them ‘He does carry milk.’ But I think with a name like the 98 Cents Discount Store, it kind of sets a lower expectation in the neighborhood. And I think with the exterior being dilapidated, that kind of reinforces that kind of mentality.”

So, last spring, summer approaching, neighbors voiced their concerns to the owner—44-year-old Mike Mohammadi, who also owns the One Dollar Mart at Seventh Street and Cherry Avenue. And Mohammadi told them to get out.

No, he didn’t, and that’s where our story becomes something other than the typical Spike Lee joint in which fast-rising yuppies clash with America’s struggling downward-trending working class.

A man who likes people and talks to his customers, Mohammadi listened to his neighbors. Then he did something that many business owners might not: he asked for their help.

“Neighborhood changes, you’ve got to improve,” says Mohammadi, a former electronics technician who emigrated here from Iran in 1994. “You can’t stay the same. This is how the business goes.”

The building owner has promised to repaint the store’s exterior, and members of the North Pine Neighborhood Alliance—which also includes potential Long Beach City Council candidate Robert Garcia—are talking to Mohammadi about everything from letting in natural light to stocking sandwiches to changing the name of his store.

“We sent out a survey to people in the neighborhood, asking them what they’d like to see there and even what they’d like the name to be,” Garcia says. “And we approached the city, the Redevelopment Agency. This isn’t a city project; it’s more of a neighborhood project. But we hope that at some point if we need to get some funding, we can turn to the city.”

Now, the Redevelopment Agency is eagerly watching the 98 Cents store.

“In the years I’ve been here, this is the first time there’s been a grassroots effort between the neighbors and the property owner who wants to do something,” says Redevelopment Project Officer David White. “I think this is going to be a test case on how we don’t have to always buy things up or bring in something new.”

With the holidays looming, big changes—how about new, shorter racks?—probably won’t happen before January. But Mohammadi says he’ll move forward despite the slowing economy.

“I haven’t found the new name yet, but this is not the name,” he says, gazing up at his store’s signage—in blocky red letters facing Pine Avenue. “That was the name for 10 years ago. Not any more. Everything’s changed.”

Tags: 98 cent store, downtown, Long Beach, rda