Caruso has set Saturday, August 15 for the grand reopening of Palisades Village, the Pacific Palisades shopping center that closed after the January 2025 wildfires swept through the community. The reopening follows more than $100 million in renovations to the 125,000-square-foot center, which currently is 99% leased.

“Following the heartbreaking fires of 2025, the Palisades community has worked tirelessly toward this moment of renewal,” said Rick Caruso, founder and executive chairman of Caruso. “We promised to come back better than before the fires, and we did. This is a moment to turn the page together, and it will be an unforgettable one. It’s a comeback story for the history books and a love letter to L.A.”

Returning tenants include Loomey’s Toys, K Bakery, Elysewalker, A.L.C., Erewhon, Zimmermann, Brunello Cucinelli, Veronica Beard, Angelini Ristorante & Bar, Alfred Coffee and Blue Ribbon Sushi. The reopening will also showcase new and first-in-market retailers, including the first West Coast location of LESET.

The luxury shopping center in Pacific Palisades will reopen next month after more than $100 million in renovations forced by the January 2025 wildfire that devastated the Los Angeles neighborhood.

Palisades Village will reopen Aug. 15, owner Rick Caruso announced Wednesday. The outdoor center survived the blaze that destroyed homes and other businesses, but it needed refurbishment to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread.

Crews are putting finishing touches on mall buildings after tearing them down to the studs, treating the wood and rebuilding the walls, Caruso said.

“Everybody’s working, and stores are moving their products in,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling that people have really locked arms and are working together.”

Pacific Palisades resident Allison Polhill, who is rebuilding the home of 30 years that her family lost in the blaze, said she is “thrilled” at the prospect of returning to the mall she used to frequent. Its comeback is a boost for the community, she said.

“Every single step that we make to reopen our commercial corridors is going to bring more people back into the Palisades,” said Polhill, who expects to move back into her home at the end of August.

A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction.

The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon, which may be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood when it opens.

Caruso’s company was able to fill the mall with tenants despite the long shutdown.

Palisades Village is 99% leased, with the majority of tenants returning, said Jackie Levy, chief financial and revenue officer. Nearly one-third of the shops and restaurants are new to the property.

Last year, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street to the inferno.

Other neighborhood shops destroyed in the fire that are reopening at the mall include K Bakery and Loomey’s Toys, which caters to children up to age 12 and used to be across the street from Palisades Elementary Charter School.

“It’s been a journey and I’m excited because I wasn’t sure that there was going to be a place to come back to,” said toy store owner Amanda Rastegar. “Hopefully we can bring some of that magic back.”

Rastegar’s home in the Palisades survived but was damaged by the fire. The family returned about eight weeks ago. Her last memory of the fire was a burning supermarket.

“I just couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening,” she said. “By the time I left, Gelson’s was on fire.”

Among the returning tenants is Angelini Ristorante & Bar. Well-known Los Angeles chef Gino Angelini said he will be in the kitchen next month for a return of the Italian restaurant.

“We won’t do a big celebrity open,” he said. “We want to have a very soft opening and see our customers come back.”

An elaborate celebration would not feel “correct for me,” Angelini said, because the devastation has been “very sad” for so many.

Other new tenants include local chef Nancy Silverton, who has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto. Women’s apparel retailer LESET will open its first West Coast location.

Caruso said he is optimistic that customers will return to the center, even though many Pacific Palisades residents are still dispersed. One tracking system estimated that about 30% of the Village’s customer base was affected by the fire, he said.

“That means 70% did not get impacted, so there’s a lot of customers still left out there,” Caruso said. Historically, the center drew customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, as well as Malibu, Brentwood and Santa Monica.

He also hopes many will be inspired to visit the revived mall.

“I believe in the goodness of people and I believe that people are going to want to support the Palisades,” he said. “They’re going to want to be there and support the businesses that have had the courage and the heart to reopen.”

Six people have been charged with felonies after allegedly posing as licensed contractors in the Pacific Palisades wildfire disaster zone, where prosecutors say they submitted more than $1.2 million in bids for rebuilding projects, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

A joint undercover operation by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation and the California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) led to the charges, officials announced on Thursday.

“As residents in Pacific Palisades and Altadena rebuild from the catastrophic wildfires in January 2025, we have a message for criminal contractors: Stay out of Los Angeles County,” said District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman in a press release.

Hochman said that hiring an unlicensed contractor is never a good deal, since it leaves homeowners at risk of illegal down payments, fraud, unsafe construction, and an inability to sell their home down the line.

“This is also an issue of labor justice, as unlicensed contracting is often accompanied by labor exploitation such as wage theft, unpaid labor, and unsafe working conditions,” added Hochman.

How the sting operation unfolded

During an undercover operation on April 15 and 16, 2026, investigators with the CSLB’s Statewide Investigative Fraud Team reviewed online advertisements from contractors offering construction services without listing a valid contractor license number.

Investigators then arranged separate meetings with the contractors at a Pacific Palisades home, where they requested bids for demolishing the property and constructing an accessory dwelling unit.

According to authorities, none of the defendants held a valid contractor’s license under their name or business, and none had a license application pending with the CSLB. Collectively, they allegedly submitted bids totaling as much as $1.27 million.

Five of the defendants could face up to three years in prison and fines of up to $10,000 if convicted. A sixth defendant faces up to six years behind bars and a fine of up to $10,000 because of a prior strike conviction.

Three defendants have entered not guilty pleas, while the remaining three are scheduled to be arraigned later this week.

Wildfire aftermath

Housing data analysis conducted by Realtor.com® researchers reveals that the total value of destroyed homes in the fire zones of Pacific Palisades totals at least $10.8 billion.

Homes damaged but not completely ravaged by the Palisades fire saw their total value decline from $2.2 billion to $1.9 billion.

Even properties that were not physically affected but merely located in the hardest-hit burn zones experienced significant losses, with aggregate values falling from $10.4 billion to $9.4 billion in the Palisades.

​The Palisades fire destroyed roughly 7,000 structures and burned nearly 23,000 acres.

With 928 Palisades homes approved for rebuilding, according to Pali Builds, homeowners are increasingly vulnerable to unlicensed contractors, including those arrested in the undercover sting.

How did the L.A. wildfires start?

The Palisades wildfire ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, in the late morning hours in the Santa Monica Mountains, and ultimately killed 12 people.

Authorities arrested 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht nine months after the wildfire, accusing him of sparking a small blaze with a “barbecue-style” lighter on Jan. 1, 2025. Prosecutors allege that the fire smoldered underground before reigniting six days later and growing into the deadly Palisades wildfire, the Associated Press reported.

Rinderknecht, a former Pacific Palisades resident who was living in Florida at the time of his arrest, was indicted in October on federal charges, including malicious destruction by fire, arson affecting interstate commerce, and setting timber afire.

But Rinderknecht’s federal arson trial ended in a mistrial on June 26, after a jury deadlocked.

​After the mistrial was announced, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli wrote on X: “The evidence is strong that Jonathan Rinderknecht is responsible for igniting the fire on January 1, 2025, which eventually became the Palisades fire. We fully intend to retry this case before a new jury and obtain guilty verdicts on all charged counts.”

Rinderknecht—who faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted—will remain in custody until his new trial, which is scheduled for Oct. 19.

Once home to fashionista Yolanda Hadid and music producer David Foster, a Malibu property impacted by the Palisades fire has sold for $6.5 million.

The house on the parcel, which appeared on reality television show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” burned down in a wildfire last year, Realtor.com reported. Yolanda Hadid, mother of models Gigi and Bella Hadid, divorced Foster in 2017. 

The couple purchased the home for $4.5 million in 2007 and transformed it through extensive renovations into a showcase of modern coastal design. Their efforts paid off in 2015, when they sold the six‑bedroom, 11‑bathroom residence at 3903 Carbon Canyon Road for $19.5 million, a fourfold increase that reflected Malibu’s soaring pre‑pandemic property values. 

Before its destruction, listings described the estate as a “distinguished promontory property” offering world‑class living on 3.25 acres, with panoramic views and serene landscaping. The home’s prominence on television and in celebrity circles made it one of Malibu’s most recognizable addresses. It carried a listing price of $35 million.

Yet in early 2025, the property was among thousands lost to the Palisades fire, which devastated Pacific Palisades and parts of Malibu. The fire, in combination with one in Altadena, erased an estimated $8.3 billion in residential value, according to Realtor.com, leaving behind empty lots where multimillion‑dollar homes once stood – and efforts to rebuild have met obstacles.

It remains unclear who owned the Hadid‑Foster estate at the time of its destruction, but its loss illustrates the vulnerability of even the most exclusive enclaves. The blazes, finally contained on Jan. 31, 2025, reshaped the Malibu market by reducing inventory, driving up insurance costs and prompting investors to reassess risk in coastal zones once considered untouchable.

Yolanda Hadid, now based in Pennsylvania, has continued her residential ventures in the Mid-Atlantic market. Her 11‑acre farmhouse estate, listed for just under $11 million in September, was temporarily withdrawn from the market in January but is expected to relist later this year. 

– Joel Russell

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Chris Pratt is coming back down to earth the same week “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” takes off in theaters. 

Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger have once again yanked their Pacific Palisades mansion off the market, extending a nearly three-year saga marked by steep price cuts and stalled deals, Realtor.com reported.

The couple first listed the roughly 13,000-square-foot home at 1362 Bella Oceana Vista in 2023 for $32 million after building the property from the ground up on a site they bought in 2018 for $15.6 million. Despite multiple relistings, open houses and at least one accepted offer that fell out of escrow, the home never traded, most recently asking just under $20 million before now being delisted again. 

The repeated false starts underscore the challenges in finding buyers at the top end of the market. But those issues bleed beyond high-end homes, according to Redfin data. Last August, 14.9 percent of sales in Los Angeles fell apart; across the country, 15.1 percent of all contracts signed fell through, marking the highest percentage of canceled sales for the typically hot month since Redfin began tracking the data in 2017. 

At least one prior delisting from Pratt and Schwarzenegger was tied to personal timing, as the couple’s third child was born late last year. Even after trimming more than $12 million off the original ask, the home struggled to gain traction.

Pratt and Schwarzenegger aren’t waiting for a sale to close to find a new home. The couple is moving forward with a new custom mansion in Brentwood. They bought the property in 2024 for $12.5 million and broke ground that year, demolishing an existing midcentury home to make way for the new build. The teardown of the Craig Ellwood-designed Zimmerman House sparked backlash from preservationists.

While construction there progresses, the couple has reportedly been staying at a Montecito estate owned by Katy Perry, located across the street from Schwarzenegger’s mother, Maria Shriver. That property has been the subject of a yearslong legal dispute between Perry and the home’s former owner, entrepreneur Carl Westcott, after he backed out of selling the Montecito home for $15 million, claiming he had been under the influence of painkillers when he agreed to the sale. Perry’s lawyers argued that Westcott was of sound mind when he agreed to the deal and only wanted to back out because he hadn’t been able to find another new home. The lawsuit came to an end in January when a judge ruled that Westcott owed Perry $1.8 million in lost rental income.

— Chris Malone Méndez

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At first glance, it looks like nothing more than a charming Spanish-revival, quintessentially Californian home — but this Pacific Palisades rebuild is constructed like a tank.

Every exterior wall of the steel-framed home is a foot-thick, fire-resistant barricade. The home is connected to a satellite fire monitoring service. Should a fire start in town, sturdy metal shutters descend to cover every window. An exterior sprinkler system can pump 40,000 gallons of water from giant tanks hidden behind the shrubs in the property’s yard. If the cameras and heat sensors around the house detect danger, the system can envelop the home in over 1,000 gallons of fire retardant and hundreds of gallons of fire-suppressing foam.

Palisades resident and architect Ardie Tavangarian is so confident in his design that he even asked the fire department if they could start a controlled fire on the property to test it all out. (They said no.)

Tavangarian built a career designing multimillion-dollar luxury homes in Los Angeles, but after the Palisades fire destroyed 13 of his works — including his family’s home — he found another calling: how to design a house that can handle what the Santa Monica Mountains throw at it. And how to do it quickly and affordably.

“Nature is so powerful,” he said, sitting on a couch in the new house, which he built for his adult twin daughters. “We are guests living in that environment and expecting, ‘Oh, nature is going to be really kind to me.’ No, it’s not. It does what it’s supposed to do.”

Tavangarian watched the Jan. 1 Lachman fire from his property not far from here; a week later that fire rekindled, grew into the Palisades fire, and burned through his house. But the painful details of the fire — the missteps of the fire department, the empty reservoir — didn’t matter when it came to deciding how to rebuild, he said. The reality is, many fires have burned in these mountains. Many more will.

For the architect, who has spent much of his 45-year career designing for luxury, hardening a home against wildfire has brought a new kind of luxury to his homes: peace of mind.

It’s a sentiment that resonates with fire survivors: Tavangarian says he’s received considerable interest from other property owners in the Palisades looking to rebuild their houses.

The metal shutters and advanced outdoor sprinkler system are the flashiest parts of Tavangarian’s home hardening project, and the efficacy of these adaptations is still up for debate. Because the measures have not yet been widely adopted, there are few studies exploring how much or little they protect homes in real-world fires.

Anecdotal evidence has indicated the effectiveness of sprinklers can vary significantly based on the setup and the conditions during the fire. Extreme wind, for example, can make them less effective. Lab studies have generally found shutters can reduce the risk of windows shattering.

These measures aren’t cheap, either. Sprinkler systems can cost north of $100,000, for example. However, Tavangarian said when all was said and done, the home he built for his daughters cost around $700 per square foot — less than what Palisades residents said they expected to pay, but more than what Altadena residents expected for their rebuilds.

Tavangarian also hopes to see insurers increasingly consider the home-hardening measures property owners take when writing policies, which he said could potentially offset the extra cost in a decade or less. As he explored getting insurance for the new home, one insurer quoted him $80,000 a year. After he convinced the company to visit the property, it lowered the quote to just $13,000, he said.

The home also has essentially all of the other less flashy — but much cheaper and well-proven — home hardening measures recommended by fire professionals: The underside of the roof’s overhang is closed off — a common place embers enter a home. The roof, where burning embers can accumulate, is made of fire-resistant material. The windows, vulnerable to shattering in extreme heat, are made of a toughened glass. There is virtually no vegetation within the first five feet of the home.

When asked if he felt he had compromised on design, comfort or aesthetics for the extra protection — one of the many concerns Californians have with the state’s draft “Zone Zero” requirements that may significantly limit vegetation within five feet of a home — Tavangarian simply said, “You be the judge.”

The Los Angeles City Council signed off on a $90 million subsidy program for Palisades fire victims. 

On Tuesday, the city council unanimously approved the funding for costs associated with rebuilding properties in Pacific Palisades that were damaged or destroyed in the deadly January 2025 blazes, My News L.A. reported. More than 20 Palisades residents and fire survivors urged the city council to approve the aid before leaders ultimately gave it a thumbs-up.

In greenlighting the subsidies, the city council asked the city attorney’s office to prepare an ordinance to officially establish the program and a framework to execute it. Under the subsidy program, all structures, including single-family homes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units, multifamily housing, townhomes, condos and commercial buildings, would be covered if homeowners rebuild within 110 percent size of the original property footprint and use the structures for the same purposes. Property owners would be responsible for fees in excess of the 110 percent rebuild and repair limit. 

The city administrative officer, Matt Szabo, and his office have been instructed by the council to recommend a funding strategy to the city council and Mayor Karen Bass, which would be incorporated into the budget for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. 

The council also approved a measure introduced by Council member Monica Rodriguez that implements protections to confirm that taxpayer funds are used for rebuilding and recovery and that property owners can’t take the money and run. “My amendment is simply to ensure that we’re trying to ensure the people would be required to reimburse the city and taxpayers for the subsidy should the owner sell the property before the certificate of occupancy is issued,” Rodriguez said, per My News L.A. 

The City of Los Angeles, which includes Pacific Palisades, has issued nearly 1,700 rebuild permits in the more than one year since the fires ripped through the seaside neighborhood, according to the state’s permitting tracker. 

— Chris Malone Méndez

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An iconic property that has been described as possibly “the greatest house in Southern California” just hit the market for the first time ever in Pacific Palisades. Asking price: $11.5 million.

A Midcentury masterpiece, the home served as the primary residence of Ray Kappe, the late architect who co-founded the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). He designed the place himself in 1967.

Kappe died in 2019, and his wife Shelly, who also co-founded SCI-Arc, died last year. Now, the property is being sold by their family trust.

Tucked on a hillside in the Rustic Canyon neighborhood, the house floats above a natural spring that flows through the property, resting on six concrete columns sunk 30 feet into the ground. The 4,157-square-foot floor plan is split across seven levels, featuring five bedrooms, five bathrooms and free-flowing living spaces wrapped in redwood and glass.

One critic called it “a controlled explosion of space.” An architect called it “the quintessential treehouse.” In 2008, when the L.A. Times Home section created a list of the 10 best houses in L.A., which featured creations from Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and Pierre Koenig, former American Institute of Architects’ L.A. chapter president Stephen Kanner said Kappe’s “may be the greatest house in Southern California.”

It’s not a house that could be built today — for a handful of reasons. First, the hovering stairs and footbridges that navigate the property have no handrails, which are now required under current construction code.

Also, the house features a ton of glass. Too much glass, according to modern California building code. The home’s skylights, clerestories and towering windows that take in the wooded scene surrounding it make up roughly 50% of the floor plan — much higher than modern limits allow.

Outside, cantilevered decks and platforms overlook a lap pool, spa, sauna and cabana shrouded in eucalyptus, sycamore, oak and bamboo.

The end result is a striking space that feels entirely unique, even in a region as architecturally eclectic as Southern California. In 1996, it was deemed an L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument.

Ian Brooks of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties holds the listing. He said calls asking to tour the property have been coming nonstop since it surfaced for sale.

“The Kappe residence will resonate with discerning buyers who value architectural provenance, impeccable design and cultural importance — a rare opportunity to own an enduring piece of architectural history,” he said.

One year later and people are mad as hell.

Open up a news story from this past Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires, and the answer to what, precisely, they’re made about is muddled.

Bloomberg asked its newsletter subscribers “What’s holding LA back?” before trying to peg a decline in property values to climate change and a cooling of investor sentiment, along with $33.9 billion in federal disaster aid being held hostage as possible answers. The New York Post,  true to form, characterized the Palisades as a “wasteland.” The Wall Street Journal struck a balance calling the recovery “slow and uneven,” driven by factors such as wealth and red tape reduction.

The lookbacks on everything from the handling of the fires’ containments to insurance and rebuilding costs have flowed freely. It was solutions and calls for accountability that were sought at a hard-hitting demonstration under the banner of “They Let Us Burn,” held on the January 7 anniversary of the infernos. The rally shut down Antioch Street and Swarthmore Avenue in the Palisades, with a crowd of several hundred gathered on the streets, some standing on top of the CVS building to listen for next steps. For some, that involves litigation. For others, it’s calling for policy reform. Still others — more specifically former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who announced his bid for mayor at the protest — want to shake up Los Angeles City Hall.

Nourmand & Associates’ Rochelle Atlas Maize, while not a speaker at the rally, was in attendance, reflecting an interest in the circumstances of multiple clients still dealing with the aftermath of the fires and “effectively frozen” from moving forward. She pointed to long-term problems that have been building well before last year’s wildfires, including permit fees, Measure United to House L.A. (ULA), construction costs and delays. Atlas Maize said policy makers should stop looking at those items in isolation and instead see their points of connection to figure out a way forward.

“We cannot keep rebuilding communities without reforming how insurance, permitting and infrastructure planning work together,” she told The Real Deal. “Homeowners need guidance, predictability and protection — not just during the rebuild, but permanently. If we don’t fix that, this will repeat itself again and again.”

Speaking of the need for change, that’s exactly what former Compass California president Mark McLaughlin told subscribers in a Friday newsletter weighing in on the Compass-Anywhere deal closing.

The deal included $1.6 billion in stock and Compass buying Anywhere’s $2.6 billion in debt for a combined value of $4.2 billion. The headcount of the merged entity is some 340,000 agents.

McLaughlin’s served as Compass California president between September 2018 and December 2020. He bounced back to the firm in 2023 as chief real estate strategist. After that two-year contract ended, the executive moved to a part-time mergers and acquisitions advisory role at the brokerage.

McLaughlin suggested to his followers the Compass-Anywhere combination has the leverage to reframe who serves who in the ecosystem of MLSs and agents. From McLaughlin’s view, the short answer is portals need to “listen and, in turn, shape a compelling offering” for their customers. 

“Our industry has been too tolerant of demands, constrictive rules and, in some instances, fines,” McLaughlin said in his newsletter.  

Time will tell if a power shift is realized. 

Corona del Mar movement

Change is also happening in coastal Orange County.

The Agency poached John Stanaland and his six-person team from Douglas Elliman, while also bringing on Craig Knizek as managing director in its Corona del Mar office.

The Agency co-founder Mauricio Umansky called Orange County a “cornerstone market” for the brokerage and said the latest additions are aimed at “long-term impact” regionally.

The office additions bring its headcount to 55 — a sizable operation that backs what Umansky’s saying in a market that not all L.A.-based firms have broken into for various reasons. 

Even still, some Los Angeles brokerages have made their plays into the coastal enclave. That includes Douglas Elliman’s Altman Brothers Team and the Oppenheim Group. Both have offices in Corona del Mar. Carolwood Estates entered Newport Beach through what is now a former affiliation with the Caruso Group (no relation to developer Rick Caruso).

Remembering Sandra Miller

Many have been spending recent weeks in remembrance of Sandra Miller, the founder of Engel & Völkers Santa Monica.

The brokerage confirmed this past week Miller’s passing during the holidays.

One word that has been repeatedly used by her colleagues to describe Miller: powerhouse.

She was the first California licensee to bring the German-based brokerage to the state and was also heavily involved in the industry. She had a seat on the California Association of Realtors Board of Directors and also held several leadership positions with the National Association of Realtors and Greater Los Angeles Association of Realtors.

Miller’s legacy in Santa Monica and beyond will continue with the office now being helmed by her son Steven Walter and brokerage manager Raymond Dominguez.

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The charred remains of the historic Pacific Palisades Business Block cast a shadow over a once-bustling shopping district along West Sunset Boulevard.

Empty lots littered with debris and ash line the street where houses and small businesses once stood. A year since the Palisades fire roared through the neighborhood, only a handful of businesses have reopened.

The Starbucks, Bank of America, and other businesses that used to operate in the century-old Business Block are gone. All that remains of the Spanish Colonial Revival building are some arches surrounding what used to be a busy retail space. The burned-out, rusty remnants of a walk-in vault squat in the center of the structure.

Nearby, the Shade Store, the Free-est clothing store, Skin Local spa, a Hastens mattress store, Sweet Laurel Bakery and the Hydration Room are among the many stores still shuttered. Local barbershop Gornik & Drucker doesn’t know if it can reopen.

“We have been going back and forth on what it would take to survive,” co-owner Leslie Gornik said. “If we open, we have to start over from scratch.”

Hundreds gathered around Business Block on the anniversary of the fire on Wednesday to witness a military-style white-glove ceremony to pay respects to the families who lost loved ones. Photos of those killed from the neighborhood were placed at the Palisades Village Green next door.

The Palisades fire burned for 24 days, destroying more than 6,800 structures, damaging countless others and forcing most of the neighborhood’s residents to move elsewhere. About 30 miles northeast, the Eaton fire burned more than 9,400 structures. Combined, the fires killed 31 people.

The few businesses that are back in Palisades serve as a beacon of hope for the community, but owners and managers say business is down and customers haven’t returned.

Ruby Nails & Spa, located near the Business Block, was closed for eight months before reopening in September. Now business is only half of what it was before the fires, owner Ruby Hong-Tran said.

“People come back to support but they live far away now,” she said. “All my clients, their houses burned.”

It took months to clean all the smoke damage from her shop. The front is still being fixed to cover up burn damage.

The firestorms destroyed swaths of other neighborhoods, including Malibu, Topanga, Sierra Madre and Altadena, where businesses and homeowners also are struggling to build back.

Some are figuring out whether it is worth rebuilding. Some have given up.

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation estimated last year that more than 1,800 small businesses were in the burn zones in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena, impacting more than 11,000 jobs.

Businesses say they often have been on their own. The Federal Emergency Management Agency tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clean up debris at private residences, some public buildings and places of worship — but not commercial properties.

Business owners had to clean up the charred debris and toxic waste on their properties. Many had to navigate complicated insurance claims and apply for emergency loans to stay afloat.

Rosie Maravilla, general manager of Anawalt’s Palisades Hardware, said damage to her store was limited, and insurance covered the cleaning, so she was able to open quickly. The store reopened just one month after the fire.

Still, sales are 35% lower than what they used to be.

“In the early days, it was bad. We weren’t making anything,” Maravilla said. “We’re lucky the company kept us employed.”

The customer base has changed. Instead of homeowners working on personal projects, the store is serving contractors working on rebuilding in the area.

Across the street from the Business Block, the Palisades Village mall was spared the flames and looks pristine, but is still closed. Shop windows are covered with tarps. Low metal gates block entry to the high-end outlets. The mall is still replacing its drywall to eliminate airborne contaminants that the fire could have spread.

All of its posh shops still are shut: Erewhon, Lululemon, Bay Theater, Blue Ribbon Sushi, athletic apparel store Alo, Buck Mason men’s and Veronica Beard women’s boutiques.

Mall owner and developer Rick Caruso said he is spending $60 million to reopen in August.

The need to bring back businesses impacted by the fires is urgent, Caruso said, and not just to support returning residents.

“It’s critical to bring jobs back and also for the city to start creating some tax revenue to support city services,” he said. ”Leaders need to do more to speed up the rebuilding process, such as speeding up the approval of building permits and stationing building inspectors closer to burn areas.”

Wednesday, on the anniversary of the fire, Caruso sent three light beams into the sky over the mall, which met in one stream to honor the impacted communities of Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Malibu.

The nighttime display will continue through Jan. 31.

Business Block’s history dates to 1924, when it served as a home for the community’s first ventures. In the 1980s, plans to tear it down and build a mall sparked a local uprising to save the historic symbol of the neighborhood’s vibrancy. It was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1984.

Tiana Noble, a Starbucks spokesperson, said the landlord terminated the company’s lease when the building burned down. Bank of America said it secured a new lease to rebuild nearby.

Business Block’s fate is still unclear. Some people want to preserve its shell and turn it into a memorial.

This week, it was ringed by a fence emblazoned with the words “Empowering fresh starts together.”

Caruso said the ruins should be torn down.

“It needs to be demolished and cleaned up,” he said. “It’s an eyesore right now and a hazard. I would put grass on it and make it attractive to the community.”

A short walk from the Business Block and near a burned-down Ralphs grocery store is the Palisades Garden Cafe, one of the few places in the neighborhood to get food and drink. The small, vibrant cafe was closed for two months after the fire, during which the employees went without pay.

Manager Lita Rodriguez said business is improving, but misses the regulars.

“We used to get tons of students and teachers who live and work here,” she said. “Our customers are mostly contractors now.”