Fifteen Years of Work and Sweat, Sixty Days to Vacate

MOVE IT AND LOSE IT - Los Angeles is unfair. City Hall recognizes that an eviction can devastate a family, but where is that concern when displacement destroys the small business that supports the family? What about the employees whose paychecks disappear with it? A neighborhood restaurant cannot simply pick up its kitchen, liquor license, permits, and decades of goodwill and reopen on another corner, like a street vendor. Yet the city gives residential tenants tools to fight displacement. But when longstanding mom-and-pop establishments are evicted, they are on their own.

The businesses at 4454 Van Nuys Boulevard occupy the other side of that policy line. They received 60-day notices to vacate. Angela Marsden, owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill, is the only tenant who has publicly described what the notices mean for her business.

How is that fair? Los Angeles has built an extensive system to protect residential tenants. Renters may receive just-cause protection, publicly supported legal assistance, and landlord-funded relocation payments that can run into tens of thousands of dollars in covered no-fault evictions. Stay Housed LA offers free legal services to eligible tenants, while city programs help renters respond to notices and file court papers. The city recognizes that displacement carries a financial cost—and requires residential property owners to help shoulder it. Where is comparable protection for small business investment and livelihood?

In 2025, the City Council unanimously adopted a citywide Right to Counsel ordinance for qualifying residential tenants facing eviction. Los Angeles also requires just cause for covered evictions and relocation payments in no-fault cases. DSA-backed councilmembers, including Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Ysabel Jurado, have made tenant protection central to their agenda. These policies rest on the premise that eviction is not merely a private disagreement governed by a lease and timely rent payments. When landlords possess overwhelmingly greater bargaining power, public intervention may be justified to prevent families from being uprooted without adequate notice, representation, or assistance.

But why should that principle stop at the residential front door? A small business that has served a neighborhood for more than four decades is not simply another name on a landlord's rent roll. It supports the family that owns it, the families of its employees, local suppliers, and customers who have made it part of their lives. When that business is forced out, the consequences spread far beyond the person who signed the lease or was forced into a month-to-month arrangement.

Marsden became nationally known during COVID after outdoor restaurant dining was prohibited while a film-production catering operation operated beside her closed patio. Pineapple Hill survived the shutdowns, entertainment strikes and the economic effects of the fires. Marsden says it is now doing some of its best business in a decade, yet it will close because its month-to-month tenancy ended.

On August 6, every remaining business in Sherman Oaks Square except In-N-Out Burger was ordered to vacate for redevelopment. The affected tenants include Pineapple Hill, a nail salon, a water store, a liquor store, and Capital Drugs, a well-known homeopathic pharmacy. Other established businesses had already departed.

The center is therefore being cleared of independent tenants while a national chain remains. In-N-Out is not responsible for the other tenants’ circumstances; it negotiated security the smaller businesses did not obtain. The difference illustrates the negotiating advantage available to a well-capitalized chain.

The redevelopment has been contemplated for years. Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council records described a larger center with offices, a parking structure, landscaping and outdoor dining, while excluding In-N-Out from the remodel. A current commercial listing markets the property as a future ‘flagship lifestyle retail destination’ with a ‘carefully curated tenant mix.’

Los Angeles planning records identify Daniel Gryczman and 4454 Van Nuys LLC as the applicants behind the project. Gryczman manages Blumax Partners, described in a public biography as his family-controlled Los Angeles real-estate investment group. The ownership group can benefit from repositioning the property; the departing tenants bear their own moving costs, interrupted operations and lost goodwill.

The landlord appears to be exercising rights normally available to a commercial property owner. Pineapple Hill had no long-term lease remaining. Marsden says the landlord stopped offering renewals several years ago and placed tenants on month-to-month arrangements. Unless a lease or statute provides otherwise, a commercial landlord may terminate such a tenancy with proper notice. There is generally no automatic right to renew, return, or receive payment for the goodwill created at that location.

That legal conclusion does not address the unfair destruction of a neighborhood mainstay. The property owner retains the land and the opportunity to earn higher rents after redevelopment. The tenant will lose the location, customer traffic, permits, improvements, and continuity that made the business valuable. A lawful decision can therefore shift all of its economic costs onto the parties with the least control over the decision.

Marsden says she was verbally told Pineapple Hill could return after construction, but nothing was put in writing. She says the proposed occupancy cost would be about $21,000 a month, roughly twice her current all-in rent, and that the patio would disappear. She estimates the restaurant would need nearly $200,000 in monthly sales to operate under those terms. Pineapple Hill is not a Chichi destination restaurant; it is a uniquely old-style dive bar exuding an aesthetic of years gone by. It is physical history and relationships with practical and sentimental value.

Marsden says she paid about $500,000 over her first decade to acquire the business. She replaced the plumbing and recently spent about $20,000 replacing the air-conditioning system, an improvement she says cannot be removed. Under the triple-net lease, she paid property expenses and repair costs without acquiring an ownership interest in the building. She also carries COVID debt and says that without a speedy relocation, she could face bankruptcy. This is the risk of requiring a short-term tenant to finance a long-lived building improvement via triple-net leases.

There is a bitter irony in the “ant” in tenant. Angela did the work, paid the rent, and poured her money into someone else’s property. Now she is being swept aside, leaving improvements behind and left with the legacy of her debt.

Pineapple Hill is not a food cart that can be rolled to another block. Its commercial kitchen, liquor license, permits, patio, air-conditioning system, employees, customer habits, and decades of goodwill are tied to a specific place. Marsden describes widowers returning to the tables where they once sat with their wives, people undergoing cancer treatment coming for company, and a running club meeting there. A new location might preserve the name without preserving the institution.

Those relationships have economic as well as sentimental value. A restaurant buyer pays for an operating concern, not merely used kitchen equipment. Its price reflects customer habits, reputation, employees, and the expectation that the business can continue at a familiar address. When the address disappears, much of that goodwill, history, and customers may disappear with it.

City Hall already accepts that protecting residential tenants imposes obligations and costs on property owners. Why should protecting longstanding small businesses be dismissed as an unacceptable burden? A family’s livelihood deserves consideration when redevelopment takes away the business that pays its bills. Owners like Angela have paid rent, created jobs, and invested their savings in establishments that serve the neighborhood. Requiring adequate relocation time and a contribution toward displacement costs would make the property owner share a burden that now falls overwhelmingly on the small-business owner.

The timetable compounds the injustice. Angela has 60 days to leave, but she says transferring her liquor license alone can take about 120 days. That does not include finding and financing a suitable location, building a commercial kitchen, securing health approvals, and completing permits and inspections. She is being forced out before she can put the pieces in place to reopen. Angela, an outspoken critic of intrusive government regulation, says she has already endured a yearlong audit.

Now her effort to save Pineapple Hill depends on navigating another costly government approval process while carrying debt and losing the income needed to repay it. Every month without an operating restaurant deepens the financial damage. A relocation opportunity means little if delays consume the money needed to reopen.

Homes and businesses are not identical, and housing is a basic necessity. But a longstanding, rent-paying neighborhood business should have some recourse: sufficient notice to secure a replacement location and obtain permits, relocation assistance, compensation for the unamortized value of major tenant-funded improvements, expedited transfers of licenses and permits, and a written first opportunity to return if the redevelopment includes comparable commercial space. 

Pineapple Hill exposes a gap between Los Angeles’s celebration of neighborhood businesses and the legal protection it doesn’t provide them. Officials can place a business on a registry and award it a plaque while redevelopment law treats its location-dependent value as zero when the lease expires.

Angela is losing her business, but the debt does not disappear when the doors close. Neither do the bills facing the families whose livelihoods depend on Pineapple Hill. The property owner retains the land, tenant improvements, and the opportunity to collect higher rents. Angela is left with the specter of bankruptcy. Los Angeles cannot claim to care about the devastation of displacement while throwing small-business owners to the wolves.

(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)