July gloom devastates local businesses

Redondo Boardwalk

The International Boardwalk has struggled to attract business during an unseasonably cool and cloudy July. Photo

Paul Hennessey looks at the sky and shakes his head.

“What is worse than having a bar and restaurant on the beach when it is cold, overcast, and drizzly every day?” asks Hennessey. “You know what is worse? Having ten of them.”

Hennessey’s restaurants – including three in Redondo Beach’s Riviera Village – employ 800 people and have been among the many businesses hit hard by the spread of the South Bay’s customary “June gloom” through July. According to meteorologist and Rick Dickert of KTTV Fox 11 news, the average temperature for July locally so far is 70.9 degrees Fahrenheit, almost five degrees below average.

Dickert, a Redondo resident, said this temperature is typical for May.

“In other words, the temperatures we have been experiencing this month are more like May than July,” Dickert said. “…The marine layer has been on steroids this summer.”

Dickert said that while this summer is not unprecedented it is indeed unusual. The culprit has been a low pressure system that has lingered all along the west coast.

“Low pressure during the winter brings rains, storms, and high surf,” Dickert said. “That same low pressure system in the summertime isn’t as intense in terms of bringing rain and wind, but it does create overcast skies, low-hanging, stratus clouds, high humidity, morning drizzle, and limited sun….And the beach is socked in.”

Redondo Beach has recorded rain or drizzle ten days this month, Dickert said. He noted that local water temperatures have also been impacted – both because of the lack of sunlight, and because of deepwater upwelling that has occurred due to strong winds in the Channel Islands area, the average water temperatures have been between 64 and 66 degrees, well below July averages of 69 degrees in the area.

And to make matters even worse – particularly for the local economy – the low pressure system has extended inland.

“Whereas normally all these inland folks experience 110 degree weather and are going, ‘I need a break from this, I’m going to the beach,’ that isn’t happening,” Dickert said. “Because it’s cloudier and cooler there as well, and they are going, ‘Oh my god, it’s cloudy here, at the beach it must be horrible…’”

Nowhere has been harder hit than the Redondo harbor area. Many of the businesses, including restaurants and boat rides, utterly rely on a summer season that just doesn’t appear to be happening this year.

Leslie Page, property manager of the Redondo Beach Marina, said this is the worst summer she has experienced in more than two decades on the waterfront.

“I will tell you it is dramatically affecting our bottom line across the board – our restaurants, the boats, parking, everything,” Page said. “Our corporate offices are looking at dramatic measures. In this down economy, many businesses were barely making it, anyway. I don’t know how we are going to make it through the winter.”

It’s gotten to the point where even the stalwart fuel dock – as resilient as any business in the harbor – has stopped extending credit and is doing cash transactions only, Page said. She said the marina is taking many measures to try to adjust, including cross-marketing efforts like a Wednesday boat ride package that includes dinner at Delzanos, cuts to all expenses, reducing boat hoist hours, and even implementing a 25 cent “grace period” parking charge.

“I come to work every day and I want to cry,” Page said. “I don’t want to lay employees off. I don’t want to cut hours, reduce hoist services. And I don’t want to be cranky with people…This 25 cents for grace period [parking] – now, it might not sound like much to you or me, but bottom line, it’s saving a reduction in pay, saving someone’s medical insurance, and we are at that critical point.”

Along the International Boardwalk, normally bustling on a summer day, crowds were sparse on a recent afternoon. Zhanna Oruntaeva, a waitress at Cambrins Restaurant, said that business has been “super slow.”

“We even had a tourist from London who came in and said, ‘Oh my god, it’s much warmer in England,’” Oruntaeva said. “Everyone is complaining. It’s very weird weather.”

“This year is different,” said Kwi Rhim, owner of Boardwalk Candy. “No sun!”

Darin Hernandez, a bartender at Naja’s Place, said the difference is stark – when the sun is out, the bar is full, and when the sun is away, the bar is mostly empty. “There is a big difference,” he said. “It is tough. But we’ll stick it out.”

Restaurants have particular difficulties with unpredictable summer weather – it’s hard to predict food supply orders or maintain appropriate staffing levels when managers can’t count on the sun.

Hennessey said his employees have suffered from reduced hours as well as declines in tip revenue as the usual beach crowds have not appeared in the hazy cool of this July.

“Eight hundred wonderful employees,” Hennessey said. “It really hurts them, and that obviously trickles down through how much money they spend in town, too…. And I think it has a mental effect on people – when the sun is shining, they want to get out of work, go to the beach, play volleyball. It’s a major impact on us, day and night. People aren’t coming to the beach. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, Hermosa, Redondo, Manhattan – it’s all kind of the same.”

Dickert said no break in the weather appears imminent.

“When will it break? Doesn’t look like any time soon,” he said. “At least seven to ten days kind of maintaining this pattern. There’ll be a little more clearing, more sun, but I don’t think we’ll see a major shift until the end of the month. But August, you know, could be a different story. There is still a lot of summer to get through.”

Hennessey, who was opening a new restaurant on a drizzly day in La Jolla as he spoke by cell phone, said he was trying to maintain a larger view of things.

“We don’t have oil coming up on our beaches,” he said. “We have to look at the bright side. This is one season. I guess we’ll make it through it.”

Page was likewise determined to see it through. She encouraged locals to double their efforts to support harbor businesses to help make up for the missing visitors.

“It’ll turn around,” she said. “It will…Can you do a sun dance?” ER

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