The Art of the Deal

By Jorge Casuso

Sept. 9 -- In a major boost for Downtown, Hennessey & Ingalls will move around the corner to Wilshire Boulevard, where the region's top bookstore specializing in art and architecture will kick off its third decade in Santa Monica a year from now.

Driven off the Third Street Promenade by escalating rents, the independent, family-owned bookstore store signed a lease last week for a large vacant space at 214 Wilshire Boulevard, where it will be flanked by two large new restaurants.

"It's good that we're staying in Santa Monica," said Mark Hennessey, whose current lease expires on August 17, 2003. "Too bad we're off the Promenade."

"It's fantastic," said Kathleen Rawson, director of the Bayside District Corporation, which runs the Downtown. "We couldn't be more thrilled. We're delighted that they're reinvesting in Downtown Santa Monica.

"They are a destination store and that will continue to draw a specific clientele to Downtown, which is great," Rawson said. "We need that."

The fate of the bookstore has been up in the air since Hennessey began renegotiating the lease on the 7,500 square foot space at 1254 Third Street last year. Hennessey -- who paid 30 cents a square foot when he moved to the Promenade 19 years ago -- was facing a hike on his $5 a square foot rent, which already totaled $450,000 a year.

"The profit sharing, the medical plan, dental plan, all those things I did, you can't do anymore because you're literally working for the landlord," Hennessey, who has 15 employees, told The Lookout last year.

Before signing the new 15-year-lease lease for an undisclosed amount, Hennessey turned down offers to move to Westwood Village. The attractive space was just a few miles north of where his parents, Reginald and Helen, with the help of David Ingalls, rented a shop in a strip mall on Pico Boulevard after selling books out of their home.

But after being wooed for a year, Hennessey decided Westwood Village was not the place to relocate.

"I think Westwood Village is still an unknown and I would not be getting such a reduction in rent and parking is problematic," Hennessey said. "There's no visionary there creating a master plan for the village."

Hennessey hopes to continue to cash in on his store's association with Santa Monica, retaining his status as a regional, if not statewide, destination for art and architecture lovers, who come for the wide variety of often expensive and sometimes hard-to-find books.

At this time next year, Hennessey hopes to have packed his more than 100,000 books and other items and moved to his new storefront between the California Pizza Kitchen and Houston's, where he hopes to continue to lure the tourists who snatch up the less expensive calendars, journals and postcards.