The corner of Pacific Coast Highway and 8th Street – until recently home to Hermosa Beach’s raciest establishments – is looking to settle down with some new tenants.
The stretch of highway was for more than 40 years home to Tender Box, a controversial sex shop that a few years ago was found to have installed glory holes for anonymous sex in its video booths. In January, Tender Box and its sister store, lingerie shop Sassy’s, both quietly drew their curtains for the last time.
Those properties, at 801 Pacific Coast Highway and 809 Pacific Coast Highway, are now both on the market and owner Dennis Kelly said there’s interest from buyers and renters. The sites are listed for $3,825 and $2,025 a month, respectively, for a five-year lease.
Just across the street, the site of the recently-shuttered Fresh & Easy market at 727 Pacific Coast Highway is also up for grabs. The store was closed last month as part of the grocery chain’s downsizing and Fresh & Easy is seeking to sell its lease and liquor license for about $3.7 million, or rent the space for $140,000 a year, with the rent rising over time. The property is owned by an LLC tied to L.A. developer Larry Worchell, who is not looking to sell at the moment.
No businesses have thus far applied to the city to move into the vacant spaces. Roger Bacon, owner of the Ralphs shopping center farther north on Pacific Coast Highway, said the locations will certainly attract considerable interest, given how much business he gets from motorists passing his stores.
“This highway has at least 70,000 cars a day going in front of my shopping center,” he said. “Somebody will go in there. You’re going to get a lot of people who are going to try to take a shot at that.”
The businesses that do move into those commercially-zoned spaces will join an eclectic landscape that includes a large lumber yard, three used car lots, a party store, a tailor and a barber shop, all within a few blocks.
One challenge to new tenants at the former Tender Box and Sassy’s locations is a lack of parking spots. That would lend the sites to high-price, specialty retail, rather than high-volume retail, said Pam Townsend, senior planner with the Community Development Department. There is also a residential apartment in the space above Sassy’s.
The site’s quirky layout fit its nontraditional tenants. But the Tender Box pushed the envelope too far when it surreptitiously installed glory holes in its upstairs video booths. The city subsequently denied the store’s retroactive request to keep the booths in 2007.
The store wasn’t universally loathed, however, and was seen by many as a last vestige of Hermosa’s past as a wild town, harkening back to the 1970s when Vada Klein opened it and hippies were still wandering the beach. But the final blow to the business may have been e-commerce, which allows people to buy anything they want without having to publicly step foot in a sex store on a busy thoroughfare.
Meanwhile, in 2007, local residents rallied to defeat a proposal from Costa Mesa sex shop Condom Revolution to move into the space right across the street, at 727 Pacific Coast Highway. That store would have made the corner into “porn central,” said local resident Joan Arias. The next year, a wine tasting establishment tried to move into that space, but never did.
Instead, Fresh & Easy moved in, in 2011. The store was one of the grocery chain’s express locations, meaning it had a smaller footprint than larger stores, such as the location on Rosecrans Avenue in Manhattan Beach, and fewer employees. The location appeared to do steady business, said Ron Arias, who also lives nearby.
But the grocery chain as a whole has had a series of financial difficulties. The company was formerly part of British grocery giant Tesco but was sold under duress to billionaire Ron Burkle’s investment firm Yucaipa Cos. in 2013, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy shortly thereafter.
Fresh & Easy decided last month to shutter about 30 of its express locations in Southern California, including the Hermosa location, to focus on its remaining stores. The Hermosa location employed about 10 part time and full time workers, a former employee said.
The store’s permit to sell liquor could transfer to the next occupant, said Shelli Margolin-Mayer, Hermosa’s economic development officer, who added she’d like to see another speciality grocer go into the space.
Perhaps the biggest change to the area will come in a couple years as Hermosa’s vast improvement plan for Pacific Coast Highway and Aviation Boulevard gets underway. Hermosa is hoping to make the highway more walkable by widening sidewalks and narrowing medians. The project could cost between $50 million and $100 million.
The plan is currently under review by CalTrans, and construction could begin in a couple years. When it does, the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and 8th Street would likely be among the first beneficiaries of the upgrades, said city manager Tom Bakaly.
“The fact that the utilities are already underground south of Aviation makes it a logical place to start,” he said.
