Winter cruel to some merchants

Balboa Peninsula businesses rely on locals to carry them through until the tourists return to shop once more.Maybe T.S. Eliot was wrong.

Eliot opened his bleak poem “The Wasteland” by writing that “April is the cruelest month.” But if you ask business people on the Balboa Peninsula, you’ll find that April is the least of their worries.

With summer more than a month in the past and school in session, business has slowed around the piers. The crowds of tourists are gone, and it’s now possible to find a parking space near Balboa Village or McFadden Square.

“I could bowl down the boardwalk here and not hit a soul,” said Patrick Moore, general manager of the Balboa Fun Zone.

Moore said the Fun Zone depends on summer for the bulk of its business. During the off-season, he can only hope that good weather coincides with three-day weekends or special events like the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade.

The week following Christmas can also be a boon to peninsula businesses, said Bob Black, Balboa Village business improvement president. But unfortunately for merchants, late December is followed by what Black called “ugly January.”

The slow pace of autumn and winter around the peninsula means that the area’s restaurants have a lot of seats available, Black said. Chris Travis, general manager of the Newport Landing Restaurant and Oyster Bar, said with a laugh that Balboa Village businesses “barely” survive after summer.

Newport Landing relies largely on diners living In Balboa Village and the Peninsula Point neighborhood in the winter, Travis said.

“If it weren’t for the locals, we wouldn’t be able to make it. We’d have to shut down for the winter,” he said.

Geography poses a challenge for peninsula businesses. Unlike Coast Highway, Balboa Boulevard does not have motorists who are simply driving through town and decide to stop at a business.

“We’re not on the way to anything,” Travis said.

Locals are vital to post-summer business at 21 Oceanfront Restaurant, which is near the Newport Pier. Mark Lamb, the restaurant’s general manager, said it relies on Newport area customers. Lamb said the restaurant has enough faithful clients to get through fall and winter without much trouble.

“It’s actually already been a good season,” Lamb said.

When commerce slows down, it can help to have a unique hook. At Surfside Sports, a board sports retailer near Newport Pier, wintertime business focuses on snowboarding, store co-owner Paul Burnett said.

The store is now experiencing a lull between summer and snowboarding season, Burnett said. Since the late 1980s, the store has invested in the sport and worked to develop a reputation as a shop with employees who are snowboarding-literate. Burnett pointed out that serious snowboarders are hard to fool when it comes to gear.

“Almost anyone can sell a T-shirt. But when you get with snowboarding, it gets so technical,” he said.

When customers are hard to come by, the colder months can become a time to spruce things up.

“We get a lot of painting done,” Moore said.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be reached at (714) 966-4624.