When their lease with Santa Clara Pueblo runs out near the end of the month, Beall’s Department Store will be homeless, a situation that employees and customers alike hope will only be temporary.
Beall’s lease at the Big Rock Shopping Center will not be renewed when it ends July 25, Manager Sonia Rodriguez said. That space is needed for frontage and parking for the Pueblo’s new hotel at the Big Rock Casino in the center of town just off Riverside Drive, Calvin Tafoya, the chief executive officer of Santa Clara Development Corporation, said.
The Pueblo began construction on the hotel last year. When it is completed, it will be seven stories high with 120 rooms, creating a need for more parking and more space immediately surrounding the hotel. That need will be met by knocking down part of the building that currently houses Beall’s, and two other private businesses.
“We’re sorry about the building, but we do have needs for our business and so that portion of the building will be torn down,” Tafoya said.
All Rodriguez knows is her lease wasn’t renewed, and she needs to find a new home for her store as soon as she can.
“We haven’t got a location,” she said. “But we will. We’re not going out of business, we’re just closing the store.”
Rodriguez said the store hopes to find a space on Riverside Drive, to be near the bulk of the city’s businesses. Until they do, she and 14 other employees are out of a job.
“We need a place big enough that will suit the amount of merchandise we have,” she said. “That should take a few months, maybe a year and hopefully not longer than that.”
If a new space isn’t found, Beall’s will be closed permanently, Rodriguez said.
That thought worries Española residents like Beall’s shopper Anna Roybal.
“It’s kind of sad to see it go, because there’s really no other place to shop in Española,” Roybal said. “I already do so much shopping out of town.”
The only other place Roybal can think of to buy clothes in the city is Wal-Mart, a choice with which she is not pleased.
“I guess my roots are in Española, but there’s just so little for us here,” she said.
Tafoya said Top L.A. Nails and Century Bank, which also have leases in the building, will remain open for the present.
Representatives from Top L.A. Nails and Century Bank said they had not been contacted about any potential termination of their leases.
District 1 City Councilor Danielle Duran said it is unclear how the department store’s absence will affect the gross receipt taxes for the city, but she believes the community will feel the loss.
“We don’t get the breakdown for individual businesses, but certainly it’s going to be hard on the community not to have a clothing store,” she said.