the end of the month, primarily due to a rent increase.
— Photo by Charles Weinberg ©
I am writing to you with the hope that publishing this letter might help put pressure on the Irvine Company to save Newport Stationers, one of the oldest, core small businesses here in Corona del Mar.
Located next to Gelsons on San Miguel Dr., they have for several generations provided us and our children with school and business supplies, wedding and bar mitzvah invitations, greeting cards, and small holiday gifts. I have been told that on Jan. 1 the Irvine company significantly raised their rent, essentially forcing them out of business.
The store has been there for 55 years. Stationary is obviously not a high profit margin business, so it is not a surprise that they can’t handle this increase in rent. In our 21st century economy, I didn’t expect them to survive forever, but it is shocking to see this old business go down so suddenly.
If I have said something wrong or incorrect in this letter, I would appreciate a response from the Irvine Company correcting it. If the business is just not viable, then maybe it can’t be saved. But if it is truly a rent increase that is shutting them down, I would ask that the Irvine Company instead work with Newport Stationers to keep this old business which our community values up and running.
To paraphrase Daniel Webster, it is just a small stationary store, and yet there are those who love it.
Russell Klein
Corona del Mar
