LOS ANGELES — Fresh flowers at the farmers market. Ice cream dripping down the side of a cone. The hum of traffic on Sunset.
Nineteen months after the Palisades Fire leveled much of the seaside community, scars of the fire are increasingly overshadowed by signs of progress.
A luxury shopping mall recently reopened in Pacific Palisades, surrounded by a sea of plywood homes and the melody of saws and jackhammers. Many residents are rebuilding, but most have not been able to move back yet.
Still, many in the Palisades say that lately there is new momentum toward recovery. With the reopening of Palisades Village and the return of the farmers market, the fabric of community, they say, is slowly being rewoven.
“The village has always played an important role in tying the community together,” said Kim Kedeshian, the owner of K Bakery. Kedeshian is one of the few people both living and working in the Palisades.
Palisadians and attendees from nearby packed North Swarthmore Avenue last Saturday, as billionaire developer Rick Caruso cut the ribbon to officially reopen Palisades Village.
Old friends greeted each other with hugs, and the many dogs in attendance gave each other friendly sniffs. The lines for coffee were long. “It’s like Disneyland,” said one person waiting in line for ice cream.
The Sotherland family sat in front of the coffee shop Alfred. They didn’t lose their home in the fire, but it burned their doormat and smoke coated the inside of their house with heavy metals.
“Hi, Zaro. Is your mom here?” Amanda Sotherland said to a young girl passing by. “Tell her we said hi.”
The Sotherlands, who bought a home in the nearby Brentwood neighborhood while they fight their insurance company, frequented the village before the fire and are happy to see it return. Walking around, they ran into friends, most of whom are still living somewhere else.
“A lot of us still can’t live here,” Amanda said, “so this is as close as we can get.”
Many see the village as a third space, away from home and work, where people can gather.
“I hope it’s actually their living room. I don’t know if that’s a third space, a second place, space or a first space. But as long as they feel at home here, then we’re doing our job,” Caruso said.
Caruso’s family lost three homes in the fire. The shopping mall, which was protected by a private firefighting force, sustained damage and Caruso invested $100 million toward remediation.
He sees reopening the village as a responsibility to the community, one he hopes will inspire other businesses to open back up: “I think that when you’re in a community, you have the means, you have ability to take the lead and be a catalyst.”
While there was nearly unanimous enthusiasm for the what the return could bring to the community, not everyone sees themselves shopping at its luxury stores. Some of the village’s stores are local businesses.
Kedeshian, the owner of K Bakery, lost her home and the fire damaged her Palisades location, forcing it to close. She now lives in a condo and reopened her bakery in the village last Saturday.
“The pioneers,” she said, referring to those who move back without retail or a community, “have to accept the fact that there’s nowhere to shop. Now that this is here, it will stir more people.”
After the Palisades Fire killed 12 people and wiped out 6,845 structures, forcing people to move away, many were hungry for community connection. Some found solace through meetups in Santa Monica. Others at Pilates classes or the few restaurants that opened.
“Did you burn or are you standing?” became a new greeting among those from the Palisades, said Haldis Toppel. “It is the kindness, it is the familiarity that we have with one another.”
Toppel, 83, lost her home of 52 years. Her lot overlooks the Queen’s Necklace, a portion of the coast that curves from Santa Monica up through Malibu. At night, city lights look like a string of pearls.
She sees the empty lots in her neighborhood as a foundation, a perspective she says was shaped growing up in postwar Munich. “Little by little, the blocks were cleared,” she said. “Little by little, they were rebuilt.”
But more than rebuilding homes and businesses, it is the social infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt: chance meetings at the gas station or grocery store, youth soccer games, churches and schools.
“The Palisades is made up of its people,” Toppel said.
“Five bam,” Peng Port said as she placed a tile on the table during a mahjong game at Palisades Village on Monday. The clacking of tiles was drowned out by the sounds of construction at a nearby Nancy Silverton restaurant.
“Mahj!” said her friend Marc Port as he turned his tiles over to win the game. The table collectively moaned, “Oh no.”
The two met while playing pickleball, but when Marc was injured, he learned mahjong. He returned home in December and is happy to see the community returning: “Each house is like a flower coming up in spring.”
At another table, Eva Doviack and Darian Jennings discovered that Doviack’s in-laws live next door to Jennings.
During the fire, Jennings’s husband and son filled buckets of water from their pool and used a garden hose to fend off the flames. “It was the craziest thing, and we had never met and we just randomly sat next to each other,” Doviack said.
The reopening of the village coincided with the 1,000th home to begin reconstruction, according to a tracker by the Palisadian-Post. So far, only 37 have been completed.
“If you build it, people will come,” said Michelle Murphy, who lost her home in the fire. She is the owner of Pali Trading Post, which opened on July 1 across the street from the village.
Murphy has never operated a store before, but she thought the community needed one. Caruso’s promise to bring the village back was enough assurance that she could open.
Before the village opened, there were a handful of restaurants, including Palisades Garden Cafe, a local hangout for Pali High students. The library opened with limited hours. A park will soon be under construction. What Palisadians say they need most is another grocery store.
On Wednesday, the farmers market returned to the Palisades for the first time since the fire. Stands selling produce, flowers, Kombucha and jewelry filled North Swarthmore Avenue.
Kristine Granz popped over before picking up her two daughters at Palisades Charter High School.
Without a grocery store other than Vons, which she said lacks great produce, she has to be smart about stops at the store. The farmers market, she said, really helps.
“It’s a feast for the eyes. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to buy first,” she said.
Granz was particularly excited to see her hummus guy, but also so many familiar faces.
“Who haven’t I seen?” she said. “It really is Mayberry.”
Brianna Sacks contributed to this report.
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