Business

Malibu businesses struggling in the aftermath of fire and PCH restrictions

Published

1 year ago

March 8, 2025

Malibu businesses struggling in the aftermath of fire and PCH restrictions

Two months after twin fires destroyed large swaths of two Southern California communities, many of the businesses left behind are struggling to revive sales in the face of displaced customers, road closures and a massive rebuilding effort that is projected to drag on for years.

The secondary crisis has hit hard in Malibu because of the ongoing closure of Pacific Coast Highway to most vehicle traffic — isolating the beachside community from customers coming from the Westside.

Some businesses have closed and others say they are struggling to stay open. Sales for some restaurants and shops have plummeted to less than half what they were before the Palisades fire roared through the east end of the city in early January.

A woman passes mostly closed stores in the Malibu Country Mart on Thursday.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Leaders in the city government and business community have urged the state transportation agency, Caltrans, to expand access to PCH as soon as possible. But with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers only about to begin clearing hundreds of destroyed homes along the highway, the crucial coastal route seems likely to remain as a choke point for months and possibly years.

In the meantime, Malibu’s government and business leaders are reminding outsiders that most of the town did not burn and that restaurants and shops are waiting for customers to return.

“The main thing we want people to know is, Malibu is open for business,” said Mayor Doug Stewart. “Yes, it’s hard to come in from the east [Santa Monica side] but there are lots of other ways to get here. Malibu is not destroyed. Our retail and restaurants are open for everyone.”

Wildfires and floods have beset the city of about 10,000 with striking regularity. But in recent years the onslaught has been particularly challenging. First came the 2018 Woolsey fire, which destroyed 465 homes, with fewer than 40% rebuilt by this year.

Landslides closed PCH last year. The Franklin fire gutted 20 structures in central Malibu, also shutting down power for days. Then came January’s Palisades fire, which burned the vast majority of homes along the ocean from Topanga Canyon to Las Flores Canyon, just a part of the 798 total structures lost in Malibu, according to the Army Corps.

A line of firefighters stretches into a business signed "Duke's."

“If the businesses here were a boxer, at that point they might have called it a TKO [technical knockout],” Stewart said. “This has hit them really hard and they are struggling.”

Mitch Taylor, longtime manager of the Becker surf shop in central Malibu, agreed: “It’s a guarantee here in Malibu that something nasty happens every five to 10 years. But this isn’t just nasty, it’s devastating.”

Epitomizing the challenges for local business is John’s Garden, a beloved sandwich, salad and soup shop in the Malibu Country Mart. Though it survived the fire, the restaurant has seen its receipts drop by more than half, with many of its non-local customers unable to pass PCH checkpoints.

Even workers who have passes to get through the checkpoints find the drive painfully slow, with the highway reduced to one lane in each direction and the speed limit cut to 25 mph as work vehicles jam the roadway.

Many workers are forced to take the longer route, from the 101 Freeway to Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon Road. The change has lengthened the one-way commute for some from perhaps 40 minutes to two hours, sometimes more.

When they arrive at work in the Country Mart, its to a quaint shopping center hushed by the absence of visitors. On a bright, windy day Thursday, a patio that can be jammed with diners sat mostly empty.

Boyan Kinov, a Bulgarian immigrant who bought John’s Garden a dozen years ago, said he is straining to stay afloat. Already, a neighboring boutique and a gym have closed. Other high-end retailers are open shorter hours. He worries that, if other businesses fail, it could further reduce foot traffic at the Cross Creek Road shopping center.

Kinov said his insurer is balking at paying on a portion of his policy for receipts lost to business interruption, saying it is only responsible for the days the business actually shut its doors, not deficits linked to the restricted highway access.

“We’re one of the oldest businesses in Malibu. We celebrate our 50-year anniversary in July,” Kinov said. “We’re like a staple, an institution. And we have zero support from any kind of agencies or the government.

“I feel like defeat, you know? It’s unsustainable the way it is. It’s very sad, and even unbelievable, to have to consider closing the doors.”

A man looks at his phone in otherwise deserted patio area.

Others local mainstays, like Duke’s Malibu, Tramonto Bistro and Caffe Luxxe on PCH near Carbon Beach, have not yet reopened. Those businesses are even harder to reach, hemmed in by checkpoints on both the east and west.

Like other businesses in Malibu, John’s Garden reminds customers from outside that they can still reach the city. The highway up the coast from the Country Mart remains open and traffic can also come over Kanan Dume Road and Malibu Canyon from the Valley.

But the bulk of visitors have always come from “town” — Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica and points beyond — making greater access to PCH critical.

At Paradise Cove Beach Cafe, where business is down more than 60%, owner Bob Morris called on political leaders up to the governor to focus on a quicker expansion of access to the highway, also known as State Route 1.

Morris said leaders should consider offering the kind of incentive given to the freeway contractor who rebuilt the Santa Monica Freeway after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. That builder earned a $14.5-million bonus for restoring a collapsed section of the freeway 74 days ahead of schedule.

Glen Gerson, owner of Calamigos Beach Club restaurant on PCH, suggested Caltrans use reversible dividers on the highway to provide two lanes of traffic in the predominant commuting direction, and one lane in the other direction.

“Nobody needs to get hurt. We have to do it safely,” Morris said. “But we’ve got to get this highway open, and in the government somebody’s got to push to make it happen.”

The highway through most of Malibu consists of a total of five lanes — two for traffic in each direction and a center lane for left turns. There is also a lane on each side for parking along most of both sides of PCH.

Burned structures line the seaward side of a coastal highway.

Now orange traffic cones limit vehicles to one lane in each direction. And the highway will soon be crowded with trucks hauling debris to be removed by the Army Corps of Engineers and private contractors.

In the whole Palisades fire burn zone, it’s estimated it will take 90,000 truckloads to finish the job. The Corps has said the work will be complete in both the Palisades and Altadena burn areas “within a year,” without giving more precise estimates for PCH and other sections of the work.

Caltrans spokesperson Nathan Bass said the agency is moving “toward opening as soon as we possibly can,” adding that recovery workers remain busy in the area and that they must “work through” their tasks, including removal of hazards, before opening PCH for people other than first responders, healthcare workers, residents, contractors and essential employees.

A man in boots carrying equipment crosses a beach toward the sea.

Locals and visitors who mostly now come from up the coast or from the San Fernando Valley are trying to fill in for the missing customers.

The city of Malibu is buying lunch at various local restaurants, every day, for roughly 100 city employees, Stewart said. On March 15, Morris plans to host a “Day of Hope” at the Paradise Cove restaurant, with free meals for first responders and those affected by the fire.

Service resumed recently on the Metro bus line traveling from Santa Monica to Trancas Canyon Road, near the far western end of the city. Some locals have wondered whether a ferry service could be launched, to deliver day trippers from Santa Monica Pier to Malibu Pier — an alternative that the city tried during a major landslide decades ago.

Kinov and other Malibu businesspeople said their spirits have been lifted by customers who made a special effort to buy extra meals or gifts.

Lisa Barron, who lost her home above La Costa Beach, said she came to John’s Garden for a sandwich to help bolster a place she has come to love.

“We don’t want what’s still surviving to die before the rest of us can rebuild and get back,” said Barron, a former business professor at UC Irvine. “With these businesses and the people who are still living here, we’ve got to keep them alive and healthy and safe so the community doesn’t go downhill.”

A man eats at an outdoor table. A sign reads "John's Garden Lunch & Snack Shop."

With the same thought in mind, Vanessa Abbott, a film editor who lives in Calabasas, popped over the hill Thursday for lunch. “Everything is still here, and I want to do my part to support it,” Abbott said, “one sandwich at a time.”

Lynn Schulz, general manager of Marmalade Cafe in the Country Mart, said the feeling of support operates in both directions.

“We feel our role in the community, even during this tragedy, is to be here, to be open, to be cranking out meals, or to do catering, whatever anyone needs,” Schulz said. “We’re doing everything we can to be here and be part of the community.”

Business

Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Published

8 hours ago

April 23, 2026

Press Room

Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.

In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”

“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”

Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.

In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.

The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.

“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.

Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.

The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.

Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.

Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.

Business

Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

Published

10 hours ago

April 23, 2026

Press Room

Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.

The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.

The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.

The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.

It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.

However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.

Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.

Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.

“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.

In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”

The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.

“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.

Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.

Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.

Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.

The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.

Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.

A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.

“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .

Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.

Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.

Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.

Business

How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Published

20 hours ago

April 23, 2026

Press Room

How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.

But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.

While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.

“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.

It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”

Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.

“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.

The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.

Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.

Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”

Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.

Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.

“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”

For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.

“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”