The Art of Business

By Teresa Rochester

Jan. 3 -- In 15 minutes the doors of Hennessey & Ingalls will open for customers searching for artful last-minute holiday gifts. In five minutes a handful of the bookstore’s 15 employees will begin to trickle in the back door, quietly putting down purses and bags before heading out to the sales floor.

But for the time being it is quiet and Mark Hennessey sits at a large wooden desk surrounded by floor to ceiling shelves filled with books alphabetized from Gaudi to Gehry. This is his office, and while he has a deep abiding appreciation for the art and architecture books that have supported his family, he is first and foremost a businessman.

And lately, business has dictated that it may be time to pack up the books, calendars, journals and postcards and leave the Third Street Promenade, which has been home to the renowned family-owned bookstore for 18 years.

“I would love to stay on the Promenade,” says Hennessey. “We have to get off the Promenade. We’re working too hard for the landlord.”

With two years left on his lease, Hennessey is facing a hike in his rent, which is currently $5 a square foot. With 7,500 square feet, that already adds up to $37,500 a month in rent or $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,” he says.

It’s a far cry from when his parents, Reginald and Helen, sold books out of their home before moving into a shop in a strip mall on Pico Boulevard with the help of David Ingalls.

But the Hennesseys and Ingalls were forced out of the strip mall when construction began on the Westside Pavilion. The Promenade, then known as the Santa Monica Mall, was perfect. Rent was 30 cents a square foot, and plans were in the works to reinvigorate the outdoor mall.
Unlike some of its neighbors Hennessey & Ingalls weathered the construction.

“It was terribly slow,” remembers Hennessey. “I think everyone had the sense that it would get better.”

And it did get better. The street and the business boomed. Students, movie studios, architects, artists, photographers and all-around image buffs formed the core of the store’s customer base. The company diversified, serving as a vendor to universities and art schools, publishing books on California Modernism and “pandering” to tourists with postcards and tactful, artsy souvenirs.

“We don’t have all of our eggs in one basket,” Hennessey says. “Art books, they’re a luxury, not a necessity.”

Savvy business aside, the pressures of the Promenade’s rents are taking a toll, and Hennessey is looking for some way to negotiate a better rent, find someone to assume his lease or move. He’s looking at Westwood Village.

The village at the base of UCLA has struggled to remake itself as a cultural retail hub. It’s an area on the verge, and the rents are cheap.

“It’s the perfect place,” says Hennessey.