California Apparel News

Laguna Beach, Calif., is well known for its beautiful coastline, art galleries and powerful zoning laws that preserve the city’s unique character.

Typically, these planning laws prevent big-box retailers and fast-food restaurants from building within city limits. But on July 19, the city council voted unanimously to reject Sophea Parros, a contemporary clothing retailer with stores in Pasadena and Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Laguna Beach city council members did not reply to interview requests for this story, but local business owners said this is most likely one of the few times an apparel retailer has been rejected by the city. The city council denied a conditional use permit for Sophea Parros because it ruled Laguna Beach was at a saturation point for contemporary women’s clothing stores. Forty of the 60 women’s clothing boutiques in Laguna Beach carry contemporary clothes, said Alan Hall, a leader of the boutique owners opposing the new Sophea Parros store. The city planning department said it had not taken an official count.

Laguna Beach, through its planning code, strives to promote a diversity of businesses by mandating that no particular retail category can dominate the city, particularly in the downtown area, the centerpiece of the town’s thriving tourist industry.

Yet on June 22, Laguna Beach’s planning commission approved plans for Sophea Parros to move into a 5,000-square-foot space at 183 Forest Ave., the city’s main retail street. More than 25 boutique owners pleaded with the city council on July 19 to reject Parros’ conditional use permit.

Hall said that Sophea Parros also was going to sell designer brands that already retailed at plenty of other local boutiques.

Both the Pasadena and the Thousand Oaks Sophea Parros stores are large, 4,000 and 3,000 square feet respectively, and carry many contemporary brands, including Rozae Nichols, Beth Bowley, Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent, Catherine Malandrino, Theory, Milly, True Religion, Da-Nang, Adriano Goldschmied, Paper Denim and Cloth, True Meaning and Candela. The Thousand Oaks store will open Aug. 4.

John Parros, president of Sophea Parros, said he will probably look for other locations in Orange County.

“The freedom to compete and to achieve is one of the liberties Americans have fought for for more than 200 years,” Parros said. “I find a lot of this hard to understand.”

Landmark Plaza Inc., the landowner that was planning to lease to Parros, is considering appealing the ruling, said the company’s attorney, Eugene Gratz. “Laguna Beach is very protective of development in this city, but it’s my personal and legal opinion that they were over-protective in this case,” Gratz said.

Sophea Parros was scheduled to start moving into the Laguna Beach store in the last week of July. The space was formerly occupied by Banana Republic, which moved out in 2004. The property has been vacant for one year.

Many of Laguna’s apparel boutiques are of an average size: 1,000 square feet or less. Hall said that boutique owners felt the store’s large size and large selection of designer brands would crush their businesses. “By knocking out the little guy, you’re knocking out competition,” he said.

Laguna Beach and Carmel are among the handful of California cities that ban national chains as part of a program to preserve local character, said zoning-law consultant Larry Kosmont, president and chief executive officer of Encino, Calif.–based Kosmont Cos. “Not too many cities have this type of control via their zoning code,” he said. —Andrew Asch