When Enrico Busto began repairing hats for his mother, a seamstress in Venice, Italy, he told her he wanted to progress from fixing hats to making and selling them.
So he left Italy for California, also leaving stressful corporate jobs in IT and later, as marketing manager for a top Italian soccer team. In 2020, he arrived in the sun-dappled, laid-back, unincorporated community of Topanga Canyon, where he opened Busto and Sun Custom Hats.
But in March, a different kind of stress slammed him not like those soccer fans who’d mob the streets immediately after a loss.
This was a slow-motion episode of lots of rain, followed by mud and boulders loosed from a hillside that covered Topanga Canyon Boulevard and shut down a four-mile stretch of the road that is Topanga Village’s “Main Street,” blocking the route to dozens of boutiques, restaurants and markets.
Topanga Canyon Boulevard was blocked by mud and rocks due to damage from storms in March, 2024. (Photo courtesy of CalTrans)
While a great effort by Caltrans re-opened the road on June 2, limiting the closure to three months instead of what could’ve been closer to a year, the economic recovery has been slow but steady. The recovery has been bolstered by grants awarded business owners from L.A. County Third District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who created a Business Interruption Fund of $250,000.
Busto and other merchants hope this Labor Day Weekend will return visitors en masse to the county community of about 8,560 residents. He hopes more visitors will begin to erase what has been a 50% to 60% drop in business during the road closure. But the return to normal is not the same for all business owners. And many were taken aback by even a three-month closure.
“That first weekend it was very quiet, you don’t see cars. It was like a dream — it was beautiful,” he began on Tuesday, Aug. 26. “By the second weekend it was getting hard. On the third weekend we said: ‘We have a real problem. There are no people coming.”
The intensity of the spring storm was amplified by climate change, which causes storms to drop more water, and wildfires to burn hotter and wider across the West. Shop owners in the picturesque but sometimes problematic canyon an hour’s drive from downtown L.A. are awakening to the new normal.
“I never imagined the closure would take so long, that is why we were not so concerned in the beginning,” Busto said. But when I found out it would be closed until October, I said we are (expletive)!”
The more extreme weather made for deeper damage and longer than usual repairs. Even old-timers in the canyon were surprised by the storm’s punch.
“Usually, we have fires and we don’t open for a week. But this was the worst one. It seemed to be never-ending,” said Jane Hoover, owner of Topanga Homegrown boutique for 24 years. She sells gifts and items for children, babies, women and men, as well as jewelry.
“For so many days, it was like crickets around here. The owners would come out of their stores and say: ‘Where is everybody?,’ ” she said.
A fund sending cash to business owners impacted by a natural disaster fueled by climate change is new to LA County, said Horvath. But similar ideas — part of adapting to the effects of climate change — could become more common.
“It caused me to think about the effects of climate change more broadly,” she said.
The idea originated from a similar program at LA Metro, Horvath said. The transit agency had used a fund to help small businesses in Leimert Park impacted by detours and road closures while Metro built the K (Crenshaw) line light-rail.
Horvath drew $250,000 from her pot of discretionary dollars to fund the program and has awarded $196,000 of that to 23 small businesses. The top grant is $10,000, with each business’ losses used to determine the amount of the award. Nine have received their grants as of Wednesday, Aug. 28. All will have received their grants within the next two weeks, according to Horvath’s Office.
For example, Busto will be getting the full $10,000, to get him back on his feet. “I have to pay some invoices. No, I’m not going on vacation with that money.”
He never expected a cash award from the county and was ready to apply for a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, a path often taken by property owners and business owners experiencing losses or damage from fires and earthquakes.
During the closure, many customers who made appointments for a custom hat consultation canceled. A drop in online business was aggravated by lack of foot traffic. “We lost all the tourism,” he said, which makes up at least 30% of his business.
When Topanga Canyon Boulevard, also known as State Route 27, was closed between Pacific Coast Highway and Grand View Drive, that blocked off most customers to canyon businesses, and prevented beach-goers from Malibu and Topanga Beach from taking the road to reach the canyon, as well as to the San Fernando Valley and the 101 Freeway.
Hoover said her business was down 20%, so she will receive $3,400 from Horvath’s fund. She benefitted from media coverage which helped draw customers who could access some of Topanga village from the San Fernando Valley side.
“I am really happy to get it. I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Hoover said. “I’ll use it to pay off bills.”
Matthew Morgan, owner of “Endless Color” restaurant in Topanga. Morgan is happy to see Topanga Canyon has reopened sooner than expected, local businesses have been hurt by the closure. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Matthew Morgan, owner of the restaurant Endless Color, will be receiving $10,000 from the fund, he said on Aug. 28. He had to lay off some employees in June but is rehiring. His business was down about 50% during the road closure. It has rebounded, but is still not up to what it was before the closure, he said.
“It is going to take another year for people to retrain their minds to come back up here,” he added.
In addition, about $54,000 from Horvath’s fund was awarded to the Topanga Chamber of Commerce to help revitalize the local economy and attract more business. The average loss per business was around $25,000, said Horvath.
The chamber plans on using the money to update its guide to businesses and hiking spots in the area, something that they have not produced in the past five years, said Ron Fomalont, president of the Topanga Chamber of Commerce.
But aside from cash awards, the area’s can-do spirit also contributed to what appears to be a fairly successful rebound, Horvath said.
For example, Busto helped form the nonprofit Visit Topanga Canyon, bringing together shop and restaurant owners to market the region. The group established concert nights every second Saturday of the month. Also, a new farmer’s market has been attracting foot traffic.
The area has patrons, including celebrities, who visit regularly. Busto boasts one of his repeat customers is Dr. Jimmy Firouz, a well-known Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Herman Matthews, the drummer for Kenny Loggins, Tower of Power and Richard Marx, is another regular customer featured on his website.
Some regulars have doubly patronized their favorite eateries by eating out twice as often, Horvath said.
“There is something special about the Topanga community. People came together. The spirit of the community is so incredibly inspiring,” she said.
The unincorporated community is often confused as being a part of L.A. city and has not had a good relationship with the county, Fomalont said.
“Her (Horvath) office and staff helped us financially but it was also psychologically, knowing that we are not alone. It was nice to know we weren’t forgotten,” Fomalont said.
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