Three old friends, all Mira Costa grads and Manhattan Beach natives, gathered in a small, soon-to-be-torn-down, cottage-like structure with a sliding wooden door, and reminisced of the “glory days.”
A time when a handshake represented a lease agreement and renting the 10,000-square-foot lot on which they stood – which over the years has served as a lumberyard, a community garden and a Christmas tree lot – was $100 a month.
The modest wooden building behind Vons on Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Valley Drive, where Advanced Painting and Rick’s Rain Gutters currently sits, is among the oldest buildings still standing in Manhattan Beach. The structure has perhaps exhausted its lifespan – with no bathroom, the business owner has rented an outhouse for 30 years.
The estimated 80-year-old building will soon be removed, symbolizing the continuing development that’s changed the 100-year-old beachfront city in recent decades.
“It definitely was a blue-collar beach community; it’s certainly changed over time to white-collar, high-end, very nice,” said Rick Mirabito, owner of Advanced Painting and Rick’s Rain Gutters, as he recalled how life used to be with his old buddies, Tom and Clayton Shepherd, who are brothers. “This is part of that transition – moving out the old, putting in the new.”
About four years ago, Vons acquired the lot, and recently the Manhattan Beach Planning Commission approved a development project to turn the space into a 23-spot parking lot for Vons employees.
“As a longtime resident, I’ve seen a lot of changes, most for the good,” said Steve Meisenholder, president of the Manhattan Beach Historical Society. “It’s called progress.”
Mirabito is moving his businesses to 147th Street and Inglewood Avenue in Hawthorne. “I’m going to miss this place,” Mirabito said. “It’s time to move on. I have no doubt Vons can put it to better use than I can, both for the community and the environment.”
[scrollGallery id=309]Photos by Alene Tchekmedyian
Also nestled in the back of Advanced Painting is a gray, rickety shack – allegedly one of the first real estate offices in Manhattan Beach, likely dating back to the early 1900s, according to Clayton Shepherd, who heard it from Marshall Kuhn.
Meisenholder said that very well could be true, adding that it was probably originally built closer to the pier. “There was a lot of real estate activity 80, 90 years ago,” Meisenholder said. Mirabito has inherited the small shack, and is exploring what to do with it after he moves.
Rumor has it the lot behind Vons was first occupied by the Kuhn Brothers Construction Company. Marshall and Bob Kuhn built many of the streets and sidewalks in Manhattan Beach. Back in the 1920s, the Kuhns donated sand to build Waikiki beach in Hawaii, bulldozing the sand into barges in San Pedro, to be transported across the ocean in towboats. “These are the stories Mr. Kuhn told us,” said Clayton Shepherd, referring the early 1970s, when he met Marshall Kuhn. “We’d come down here, me and my friends, and we’d talk for hours with Mr. Kuhn.”
Kuhn sold the land to Pete Ristani before Kuhn died in the late 1970s.
In 1975, over a handshake with Ristani, Clayton began renting the space for $100 a month, he said. That winter, he opened a Christmas tree lot. “This would be like coming to your uncle’s Christmas tree lot,” Mirabito said.
With each tree came a White Russian, a cocktail made of vodka and coffee liqueurs. “It was different back then in Manhattan Beach,” Clayton said. Once, he got a $12 ticket from the city for selling firewood without a business license, he recalled, laughing. “It was a time when you could do anything you wanted, and ask permission later.”
The lucrative Christmas tree lot sustained Clayton year-round, so for the remainder of the year, he created a community garden. “We grew corn, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, strawberries; this whole place, this was pure, wonderful sand to grow vegetables in,” Clayton said. “We had bees, a neighbor used to yell at me because she said she got stung by the bees…I had so much honey coming out of here.”
All crops and jars of honey were donated to senior citizens in the neighborhood, Clayton said. “We had so much fun in this place, everybody was invited,” recalled Tom Shepherd. “It didn’t matter whether you liked us, hated us – you were welcome.”
In 1980, Clayton turned the lot into a recycling company. The company held paper drives in the schools and one year, collected 500,000 tons of paper and cans from the city. As a thank you, Clayton’s company donated 200 trees to the city, which currently stand in a tall lined on Valley Drive.
Mirabito stumbled upon the lot about 30 years ago. As a self-described “young punk,” he’d been painting out of the back of his Volkswagen bus and had neighbors complaining about commercial vehicles parked on residential streets. And so he remembered the lot where many of childhood memories were made. With a handshake, he got the spot.
“People tolerated this piece of property and they did it respectably without a lot of issues,” Clayton said. “It’s been accepted by the community for what it is. People who know the history love it even more.”
After reminiscing, the three friends grabbed drinks at the Shade Hotel. “We can’t stop the progression of society and Vons and all these big corporate entities, but we can certainly remember the value of how much importance it had,” Tom Shepherd said.
